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SEdltton &e Xttxc 

The Edition de L^ixe is printed from type and zvill 
be limited to Five Hundred Copies, of which this is 



No. 



GEBBIE and COMPANY. 



r ' 



President. 




Secretary. 




The Night Guard. 

Page 70. 



UNIFORM EDITION 



THE 
WILDERNESS HUNTER 

An Account of the Big Game of the United States 
AND its Chase with Horse, Hound and Rifle 



By 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 



Volume I 



PHILADELPHIA 

GEBBIE AND COMPANY 
1903 



ECGO 

^1 



'(% 



iHt IIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

. Ao Copies Received 

FEB 12 tQ03 

.. Copytight Entry 

CLASS CC- XXc. No. 
^ X -i. « 3 

COPY A. 



V45 



Copyright, 1893 
Copyright, 1903 

by 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



This edition of " The Wilderness Hunter" is issued under 
special arrangement with G. P. Putnam's Sons 



TO 

E. K. R. 



"They saw the silences 
Move by and beckon; saw the forms, 
The very beards, of burly storms, 
And heard them talk like sounding seas . . 
They saw the snowy mountains rolled 
And heaved along the nameless lands 
Like mighty billows; saw the gold 
Of awful sunsets; saw the blush 
Of sudden dawn, and felt the hush 
Of heaven when the day sat down 
And hid his face in dusky hands." 

Joaquin Miller. 



"In vain the speeding or shyness; 
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods . . . 

. where geese nip their food with short jerks, 
Where sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless prairie. 
Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square 

miles, far and near, 
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and ice-clad 

trees . . . 
The moose, large as an ox, cornered by hunters, plunging 

with his forefeet, the hoofs as sharp as knives . 
The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, 
the bed of hemlock boughs, and the bear-skin." 

Walt Whitman. 



VOL. I. 



PREFACE 

FOR a number of years much of my life was 
spent either in the wilderness or on the 
borders of the settled country — if, indeed, 
" settled" is a term that can rightly be applied to 
the vast, scantily peopled regions where cattle- 
ranching is the only regular industry. During 
this time I hunted much, among the mountains 
and on the plains, both as a pastime and to pro- 
cure hides, meat, and robes for use on the ranch ; 
and it was my good luck to kill all the various 
kinds of large game that can properly be consid- 
ered to belong to temperate North America. 

In hunting, the finding and killing of the game 
is after all but a part of the whole. The free, self- 
reliant, adventurous life, with its rugged and stal- 
wart democracy ; the wild surroundings, the grand 
beauty of the scenery, the chance to study the 
ways and habits of the woodland creatures — all 
these unite to give to the career of the wilderness 
hunter its peculiar charm. The chase is among 
the best of all national pastimes ; it cultivates that 
vigorous manliness for the lack of which in a na- 
tion, as in an individual, the possession of no other 
qualities can possibly atone. 

VOL. I . vii 



viii Preface 

No one but he who has partaken thereof can 
understand the keen deUght of hunting in lonely 
lands. For him is the joy of the horse well ridden 
and the rifle well held; for him the long days of 
toil and hardship, resolutely endured, and crowned 
at the end with triumph. In after years there 
shall come forever to his mind the memory of end- 
less prairies shimmering in the bright sun ; of vast 
snow-clad wastes lying desolate under gray skies ; 
of the melancholy marshes ; of the rush of mighty 
rivers; of the breath of the evergreen forest in 
summer; of the crooning of ice-armored pines at 
the touch of the winds of winter ; of cataracts roar- 
ing between hoary mountain masses; of all the 
innumerable sights and sounds of the wilderness ; 
of its immensity and mystery ; and of the silences 
that brood in its still depths. 



Sagamore Hill, 

June, 1893. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS; WILDERNESS HUNTERS AND 

WILDERNESS GAME 

The American wilderness — Forests, plains, mountains — 
Likeness and unlikeness to the Old-World wilderness — Wil- 
derness hunters — Boone, Crockett, Houston, Carson — The 
trappers — The buffalo hunters — The stockmen — The regular 
army — Wilderness game — Bison, moose, elk, caribou, deer, 
antelope — Other game — Hunting in the wilderness. . . . 1-23 

CHAPTER II 

HUNTING FROM THE RANCH; THE BLACKTAIL DEER 

In the cattle country — Life on a ranch — A round-up — 
Branding a maverick — The Bad Lands — A shot at a blacktail 
— Still-hunting the blacktail — Its habits — Killing a buck in 
August — A shot at close range — Occasional imwariness of 
blacktail 24-43 

CHAPTER III 

THE WHITETAIL DEER; AND THE BLACKTAIL OF THE COLUMBIA 

The whitetail — Yields poor sport — Fire hunting — Hunting 
with hounds — Shooting at running game — Queer adventure — 
Anecdotes of plainsmen — Good and bad shots — A wagon-trip 
— A shot from the ranch-house verandah — The Columbian 
blacktail 44-64 

VOL. I. 



X Contents 

CHAPTER IV 

ON THE CATTLE RANGES; THE PRONGHORN ANTELOPE 

Riding to the round-up — The open plains — Sights and 
sounds — Gophers, prairie dogs, sharp-tail grouse, antelope — 
The cow-camp — Standing night guard — Dawn — Make an an- 
telope hunt — An easy stalk — A difficult stalk — Three antelope 
shot — The plains skylark— The meadow lark — The mocking- 
bird — Other singers — Harsher wilderness sounds — Pack-rats 
— Plains ferret, its ferocity — The war eagle — Attacks antelope 
— Kills jack-rabbit — One shot on wing with rifle 65-86 

CHAPTER V 

HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK; FROST, FIRE, AND THIRST 

Hunting the prongbuck — Long shots — Misses — Winter 
weather — A hunt in December — Riding in the bitter cold — 
The old hunter's tepee — A night in a line camp — An antelope 
herd — Two bucks shot — Riding back to ranch — The immi- 
grant train — Hunting in fall — Fighting fire — A summer hunt 
— Sufferings from thirst — Swimming cattle across a swollen 
stream — Wagon-trip to the Black Hills — The great prairies — 
A prongbuck shot — Pleasant camp — Buck shot in morning 
— Continue our journey — Shooting sage-fowl and prairie-fowl 
with rifie 87-1 1 7 

CHAPTER VI 

AMONG THE HIGH HILLS; THE BIGHORN OR MOUNTAIN SHEEP 

A summer on the ranch — Working among the cattle — Kill- 
ing game for the ranch — A trip after mountain sheep— The 
Bad Lands — Solitary camp — The old horse Manitou — Still- 
hunt at dawn — Young ram shot — A hunt in the Rocky 
Mountains — An old bighorn stalked and shot — Habits of the 
game 1 18-130 



Contents xi 

CHAPTER VII 

MOUNTAIN game; THE WHITE-GOAT 

A trip to the Bighole Basin — Incidents of travel with a 
wagon — Camp among the mountains — A trip on foot after 
goats — Spruce grouse — Lying out at night — A chmb over the 
high peaks — Two goats shot — Weary tramp back — A hunt in 
the Kootenai cotmtry — Hard cHmbing among the wooded 
mountains — Goat shot on brink of chasm — Ptarmigan for 
supper — Goat hunting very hard work — Ways and habits of 
the goats — Not much decrease in numbers 131-154 

CHAPTER VIII 

HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS; THE CARIBOU 

A camp on Kootenai Lake — Travelling on foot through the 
dense forests — Excessive toil — Water-shrew and water-thrush 
— Black bear killed — Mountain climbing — Woodchucks and 
conies — The Indian Ammil — Night sounds — A long walk — 
A caribou killed — A midwinter trip on snow-shoes in Maine — 
Footprints on the snow — A helpless deer — Caribou at ease in 
the deep drifts 155-183 

CHAPTER IX 

THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

A hunt in the Bitter Root Mountains — A trip on foot — Two 
bull elk fighting — The peace-maker — All three shot — Habits 
of the wapiti — Their bungling — A grand chorus— Shooting a 
bull at sunrise — Another killed near the ranch — Vanishing of 
the elk — Its antlers — The lynx — Porcupine — Chickarees and 
chipmunks — Clarke's crow — Lewis's woodpecker — Whisky- 
jack — Trout — The Yellowstone canyon 184-208 



xii Contents 

CHAPTER X 

AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

In the Shoshones — Travelling with a pack-train — Scenery 
— Flowers — A squaw-man — Bull elk shot in rain while chal- 
lenging — Storm — Breaking camp in rain — Two- Ocean Pass — 
Our camp — A young ten-pointer shot — The mountains in 
moonlight — Blue grouse — Snow-shoe rabbits — Death of a 
master bull — The Tetons — Following a bull by scent — 111 
luck — Luck changes — Death of spike bull — Three bulls killed 
— Travelling home — Heavy snowstorm — Bucking horse — 
Various hunts compared — Number cartridges used — Still- 
hunting the elk 209-239 

CHAPTER XI 

THE moose; the beast of the woodland 

The moose of the Rocky Mountains — Its habits — Difficult 
nature of its haunts — Repeated failures while hunting it — 
Watching a marsh at dawn — A moose in the reeds — Stalking 
and shooting him — Travelling light with a pack-train — A 
beaver meadow — Shooting a big bull at dawn — The moose in 
summer, in winter — Young moose — Pugnacity of moose — 
Still-hunting moose — Rather more easy to kill than whitetail 
deer — At times a dangerous antagonist — The winter yards — 
Hunting on snow-shoes — A narrow escape — A fatal en- 
counter 240-2 7 1 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Night Guard .... Frontispiece 
R. G. Vosburgh 

A Prairie Fire 103 

E. J. Read 

Black Bear Hunting ..... 163 
E. J. Read 

Hunting the Elk 227 

E. J. Read 



Xlll 



THE WILDERNESS 
HUNTER 



CHAPTER I 

THE AMERICAN WILDERNESS; WILDERNESS 
HUNTERS AND WILDERNESS GAME 



M 



ANIFOLD are the shapes taken by the 
American wilderness. In the east, from 
"^ ' •*■ the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi val- 
ley, lies a land of magnificent hardwood forest. In 
endless variety and beauty, the trees cover the 
ground, save only where they have been cleared 
away by man, or where towards the west the ex- 
panse of the forest is broken by fertile prairies. 
Towards the north, this region of hardwood trees 
merges insensibly into the southern extension of 
the great subarctic forest; here the silver stems 
of birches gleam against the sombre background 
of coniferous evergreens. In the southeast again, 
by the hot, oozy coasts of the South Atlantic and 
the Gulf, the forest becomes semi-tropical; palms 
wave their feathery fronds, and the tepid swamps 
teem with reptile life. 



VOL. I. — 1. 



2 The Wilderness Hunter 

Some distance beyond the Mississippi, stretch- 
ing from Texas to North Dakota, and westward to 
the Rocky Mountains, Hes the plains country. 
This is a region of hght rainfall, where the ground 
is clad with short grass, while cotton wood trees 
fringe the courses of the winding plains streams; 
streams that are alternately turbid torrents and 
mere dwindling threads of water. The great 
stretches of natural pasture are broken by gray 
sage-brush plains and tracts of strangely shaped 
and colored Bad Lands; sun-scorched wastes in 
summer, and in winter arctic in their iron desola- 
tion. Beyond the plains rise the Rocky Moun- 
tains, their flanks covered with coniferous woods ; 
but the trees are small, and do not ordinarily grow 
very closely together. Towards the north the 
forest becomes denser, and the peaks higher ; and 
glaciers creep down towards the valleys from the 
fields of everlasting snow. The brooks are brawl- 
ing, trout-filled torrents; the swift rivers foam 
over rapid and cataract, on their way to one or the 
other of the two great oceans. 

Southwest of the Rockies evil and terrible des- 
erts stretch for leagues and leagues, mere waterless 
wastes of sandy plain and barren mountain, 
broken here and there by narrow strips of fertile 
ground. Rain rarely falls, and there are no 
clouds to dim the brazen sun. The rivers run in 
deep canyons, or are swallowed by the burning 



The American Wilderness 3 

sand; the smaller watercourses are dry through- 
out the greater part of the year. 

Beyond this desert region rise the sunny Sierras 
of California, with their fiower-clad slopes and 
groves of giant trees; and north of them, along 
the coast, the rain-shrouded mountain chains of 
Oregon and Washington, matted with the tower- 
ing growth of the mighty evergreen forest. 

The white hunters, who from time to time first 
penetrated the different parts of this wilderness, 
found themselves in such hunting-grounds as 
those wherein, long ages before, their Old- World 
forefathers had dwelt ; and the game they chased 
was much the same as that their lusty barbarian 
ancestors followed, with weapons of bronze and 
of iron, in the dim years before history dawned. 
As late as the end of the seventeenth century the 
turbulent village nobles of Lithuania and Livonia 
hunted the bear, the bison, the elk, the wolf, and 
the stag, and hung the spoils in their smoky 
wooden palaces ; and so, two hundred years later, 
the free hunters of Montana, in the interludes be- 
tween hazardous mining quests and bloody In- 
dian campaigns, hunted game almost or quite the 
same in kind, through the cold mountain forests 
surrounding the Yellowstone and Flathead lakes, 
and decked their log cabins and ranch-houses with 
the hides and horns of the slaughtered beasts. 

Zoologically speaking, the north temperate 



4 The Wilderness Hunter 

zones of the Old and New Worlds are very similar, 
differing from one another much less than they do 
from the various regions south of them, or than 
these regions differ among themselves. The un- 
trodden American wilderness resembles, both in 
game and physical character, the forests, the moun- 
tains, and the steppes of the Old World as it was 
at the beginning of our era. Great woods of pine 
and fir, birch and beech, oak and chestnut ; streams 
where the chief game fish are spotted trout and 
silvery salmon; grouse of various kinds as the 
most common game birds, — all these the hunter 
finds as characteristic of the New World as of the 
Old. So it is with most of the beasts of the chase, 
and so also with the fur-bearing animals that fur- 
nish to the trapper alike his life-work and his means 
of livelihood. The bear, wolf, bison, moose, cari- 
bou, wapiti, deer, and bighorn, the lynx, fox, 
wolverine, sable, mink, ermine, beaver, badger, 
and otter of both worlds are either identical or 
more or less closely kin to one another. Some- 
times of the two forms, that found in the Old 
World is the larger. Perhaps more often the re- 
verse is true, the American beast being superior in 
size. This is markedly the case with the wapiti, 
which is merely a giant brother of the European 
stag, exactly as the fisher is merely a very large 
cousin of the European sable or marten. The ex- 
traordinary prong-buck, the only hollow-horned 



The American Wilderness 5 

ruminant which sheds its horns annually, is a dis- 
tant representative of the Old- World antelopes of 
the steppes ; the queer white antelope-goat has for 
its nearest kinsfolk certain Himalayan species. Of 
the animals commonly known to our hunters and 
trappers, only a few, such as the cougar, peccary, 
raccoon, possum (and among birds the wild tur- 
key), find their nearest representatives and type 
forms in tropical America. 

Of course, this general resemblance does not 
mean identity. The differences in plant life and 
animal life, no less than in the physical features of 
the land, are sufficiently marked to give the Amer- 
ican wilderness a character distinctly its own. 
Some of the most characteristic of the woodland 
animals, some of those which have most vividly 
impressed themselves on the imagination of the 
hunters and pioneer settlers, are the very ones 
which have no Old- World representatives. The 
wild turkey is in every way the king of American 
game birds. Among the small beasts the coon 
and the possum are those which have left the 
deepest traces in the humbler lore of the frontier ; 
exactly as the cougar — usually under the name of 
panther or mountain lion — is a favorite figure in 
the wilder hunting tales. Nowhere else is there 
anything to match the wealth of the eastern hard- 
wood forests in number, variety, and beauty of 
trees; nowhere else is it possible to find conifers 



6 The Wilderness Hunter 

approaching in size the giant redwoods and se- 
quoias of the Pacific slope. Nature here is generally 
on a larger scale than in the Old- World home of 
our race. The lakes are like inland seas, the rivers 
like arms of the sea. Among stupendous moun- 
tain chains there are valleys and canyons of fath- 
omless depth and incredible beauty and majesty. 
There are tropical swamps and sad, frozen marshes ; 
deserts and Death Valleys, weird and evil, and the 
strange wonderland of the Wyoming geyser re- 
gion. The waterfalls are rivers rushing over preci- 
pices; the prairies seem without limit, and the 
forest never ending. 

At the time when we first became a nation, nine 
tenths of the temtory now included within the 
limits of the United States was wilderness. It was 
during the stirring and troubled years immediately 
preceding the outbreak of the Revolution that 
the most adventurous hunters, the vanguard of the 
hardy army of pioneer settlers, first crossed the 
Alleghanies, and roamed far and wide through 
the lonely, danger-haunted forests which filled 
the No-man's-land lying between the Tennessee 
and the Ohio. They waged ferocious warfare with 
Shawnee and Wyandott and wrought huge havoc 
among the herds of game with which the forest 
teemed. While the first Continental Congress was 
still sitting, Daniel Boon, the archetype of the 
American hunter, was leading his bands of tall 



The American Wilderness ^ 

backwoods riflemen to settle in the beautiful 
country of Kentucky, where the red and the white 
warriors strove with such obstinate rage that both 
races alike grew to know it as "the dark and 
bloody ground." 

Boon and his fellow-hunters were the heralds 
of the oncoming civilization, the pioneers in that 
conquest of the wilderness which has at last been 
practically achieved in our own day. Where they 
pitched their camps and built their log huts or 
stockaded hamlets, towns grew up, and men who 
were tillers of the soil, not mere wilderness wan- 
derers, thronged in to take and hold the land. 
Then, ill at ease among the settlements for which 
they had themselves made ready the way, and 
fretted even by the slight restraints of the rude 
and uncouth semi-civilization of the border, the 
restless hunters moved onward into the yet im- 
broken wilds where the game dwelt and the red 
tribes marched forever to war and hunting. Their 
untamable souls ever found something congenial 
and beyond measure attractive in the lawless free- 
dom of the lives of the very savages against whom 
they warred so bitterly. 

Step by step, often leap by leap, the frontier of 
settlement was pushed westward; and ever from 
before its advance fled the warrior tribes of the 
red men and the scarcely less intractable array of 
white Indian fighters and game hunters. When 



8 The Wilderness Hunter 

the Revolutionary War was at its height, George 
Rogers Clark, himself a mighty hunter of the old 
backwoods type, led his handful of hunter-soldiers 
to the conquest of the French towns of the Illinois. 
This was but one of the many notable feats of 
arms performed by the wild soldiery of the back- 
woods. Clad in their fringed and tasselled 
hunting shirts of buckskin or homespun, with coon- 
skin caps and deerhide leggings and moccasins, 
with tomahawk and scalping-knife thrust into 
their bead-worked belts, and long rifles in hand, 
they fought battle after battle of the most bloody 
character, both against the Indians, as at the 
Great Kanawha, at the Fallen Timbers, and at 
Tippecanoe, and against more civilized foes, as at 
King's Mountain, New Orleans, and the River 
Thames. 

Soon after the beginning of the present century 
Louisiana fell into our hands, and the most daring 
hunters and explorers pushed through the forests 
of the Mississippi valley to the great plains, 
steered across these vast seas of grass to the Rocky 
Mountains, and then through their rugged defiles 
onwards to the Pacific Ocean. In every work of 
exploration, and in all the earlier battles with the 
original lords of the western and southwestern 
lands, whether Indian or Mexican, the adven- 
turous hunters played the leading part; while 
close behind came the swarm of hard, dogged, 



The American Wilderness 9 

border-farmers, — a masterful race, good fighters 
and good breeders, as all masterful races must be. 
Very characteristic in its way was the career of 
quaint, honest, fearless Davy Crockett, the Ten- 
nessee rifleman and Whig Congressman, perhaps 
the best shot in all our country, whose skill in the 
use of his favorite weapon passed into a proverb, 
and who ended his days by a hero's death in the 
ruins of the Alamo. An even more notable man 
was another mighty hunter, Houston, who when a 
boy ran away to the Indians ; who while still a lad 
returned to his own people to serve under Andrew 
Jackson in the campaigns which that greatest of 
all the backwoods leaders waged against the 
Creeks, the Spaniards, and the British. He was 
wounded at the storming of one of the strong- 
holds of Red Eagle's doomed warriors, and re- 
turned to his Tennessee home to rise to high civil 
honor, and become the foremost man of his State, 
Then, while Governor of Tennessee, in a sudden 
fit of moody anger, and of mad longing for the un- 
fettered life of the wilderness, he abandoned his 
office, his people, and his race, and fled to the 
Cherokees beyond the Mississippi. For years he 
lived as one of their chiefs ; until one day, as he 
lay in ignoble ease and sloth, a rider from the south, 
from the rolling plains of the San Antonio and 
Brazos, brought word that the Texans were up, 
and in doubtful struggle striving to wrest their 



lo The Wilderness Hunter 

freedom from the lancers and carbineers of Santa 
Anna. Then his dark soul flamed again into 
burning life; riding by night and day he joined 
the risen Texans, was hailed by them as a heaven- 
sent leader, and at the San Jacinto led them on to 
the overthrow of the Mexican host. Thus the 
stark hunter, who had been alternately Indian 
fighter and Indian chief, became the President of 
the new Republic, and, after its admission into 
the United States, a Senator at Washington ; and, 
to his high honor, he remained to the end of his 
days staunchly loyal to the flag of the Union. 

By the time that Crockett fell, and Houston be- 
came the darling leader of the Texans, the typical 
hunter and Indian fighter had ceased to be a 
backwoodsman; he had become a plainsman, or 
mountain-man ; for the frontier, east of which he 
never willingly went, had been pushed beyond the 
Mississippi. Restless, reckless, and hardy, he 
spent years of his life in lonely wanderings through 
the Rockies as a trapper; he guarded the slow- 
moving caravans, which for purposes of trade 
journeyed over the dangerous Santa Fe trail; he 
guided the large parties of frontier settlers who, 
driving before them their cattle, with all their 
household goods in their white-topped wagons, 
spent perilous months and seasons on their weary 
way to Oregon or California. Joining in bands, 
the stalwart, skin-clad riflemen waged ferocious 



The American Wilderness n 

war on the Indians, scarcely more savage than 
themselves, or made long raids for plunder and 
horses against the outlying ]\Iexican settlements. 
The best, the bravest, the most modest of them all, 
was the renowned Kit Carson. He was not only a 
mighty hunter, a daring fighter, a finder of trails, 
and maker of roads through the unknown, untrod- 
den wilderness, but also a real leader of men. 
Again and again he crossed and re-crossed the 
continent, from the Mississippi to the Pacific ; he 
guided many of the earliest military and explor- 
ing expeditions of the United States Govern- 
ment; he himself led the troops in victorious 
campaigns against Apache and Navahoe ; and in 
the Civil War he was made a colonel of the 
Federal army. 

After him came many other hunters. Most 
were pure-blooded Americans, but many were 
Creole Frenchmen, Mexicans, or even members of 
the so-called civilized Indian tribes, notably the 
Delawares. Wide were their wanderings, many 
their strange adventures in the chase, bitter their 
unending warfare with the red lords of the land. 
Hither and thither they roamed, from the deso- 
late, burning deserts of the Colorado to the grassy 
plains of the upper Missouri ; from the rolling 
Texas prairies, bright beneath their sunny skies, 
to the high snow peaks of the northern Rockies, 
or the giant pine forests and soft, rainy weather 



12 The Wilderness Hunter 

of the coasts of Puget Sound. Their main busi- 
ness was trapping, furs being the only articles 
yielded by the wilderness, as they knew it, which 
were both valuable and portable. These early 
hunters were all trappers likewise, and, indeed, 
used their rifles only to procure meat or repel at- 
tacks. The chief of the fur-bearing animals they 
followed was the beaver, which abounded in the 
streams of the plains and mountains; in the far 
north they also trapped otter, mink, sable, and 
fisher. They married squaws from among the In- 
dian tribes with which they happened for the mo- 
ment to be at peace ; they acted as scouts for the 
United States troops in their campaigns against 
the tribes with which they happened to be at 
war. 

Soon after the Civil War the life of these hunters, 
taken as a class, entered on its final stage. The 
Pacific coast was already fairly well settled, and 
there were a few mining camps in the Rockies ; but 
most of this Rocky Mountains region, and the en- 
tire stretch of plains country proper, the vast belt 
of level or rolling grass -land lying between the Rio 
Grande and the Saskatchewan, still remained pri- 
meval wilderness, inhabited only by roving hunters 
and formidable tribes of Indian nomads, and by 
the huge herds of game on which they preyed, 
Beaver swarmed in the streams and yielded a rich 
harvest to the trapper; but trapping was no 



The American Wilderness 13 

longer the mainstay of the adventurous plainsmen. 
Foremost among the beasts of the chase, on ac- 
count of its numbers, its size, and its economic im- 
portance, was the bison, or American buffalo ; its 
innumerable multitudes darkened the limitless 
prairies. As the transcontinental railroads were 
pushed towards completion, and the tide of settle- 
ment rolled onwards with ever increasing rapidity, 
buffalo robes became of great value. The hunters 
forthwith turned their attention mainly to the 
chase of the great, clumsy beasts, slaughtering 
them by hundreds of thousands for their hides; 
sometimes killing them on horseback, but more 
often on foot, by still-hunting, with the heavy, 
long-range Sharp's rifle. Throughout the fifteen 
years during which this slaughter lasted, a succes- 
sion of desperate wars was waged with the banded 
tribes of the Horse Indians. All the time, in un- 
ending succession, long trains of big white-topped 
wagons crept slowly westward across the prairies, 
marking the steady oncoming of the frontier 
settlers. 

By the close of 1883 the last buffalo herd was 
destroyed. The beaver were trapped out of all 
the streams, or their numbers so thinned that it no 
longer paid to follow them. The last formidable 
Indian war had been brought to a successful close. 
The flood of the incoming whites had risen over 
the land ; tongues of settlement reached from the 



14 The Wilderness Hunter 

Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, and from the 
Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. The frontier 
had come to an end; it had vanished. With it 
vanished also the old race of wilderness hunters, 
the men who spent all their days in the lonely 
wilds, and who killed game as their sole means of 
livelihood. Great stretches of wilderness still re- 
main in the Rocky Mountains, and here and there 
in the plains country, exactly as much smaller 
tracts of wild land are to be found in the Alle- 
ghanies and northern New York and New Eng- 
land ; and on these tracts occasional hunters and 
trappers still linger; but as a distinctive class, 
with a peculiar and important position in Amer- 
ican life, they no longer exist. 

There were other men beside the professional 
hunters, who lived on the borders of the wilder- 
ness, and followed hunting, not only as a pastime, 
but also as yielding an important portion of their 
subsistence. The frontier farmers were all hunt- 
ers. In the eastern backwoods, and in certain 
places in the west, as in Oregon, these adven- 
turous tillers of the soil were the pioneers among 
the actual settlers ; in the Rockies their places were 
taken by the miners, and on the great plains by the 
ranchmen and cowboys, the men who lived in the 
saddle, guarding their branded herds of horses and 
homed stock. Almost all of the miners and cow- 
boys were obliged on occasions to turn hunters. 



The American Wilderness 15 

Moreover, the regular army which played so im- 
portant a part in all the later stages of the winning 
of the west produced its full share of mighty hunt- 
ers. The later Indian wars were fought princi- 
pally by the regulars. The West Point officer and 
his little company of trained soldiers appeared 
abreast of the first hardy cattlemen and miners. 
The ordinary settlers rarely made their appear- 
ance until, in campaign after campaign, always 
inconceivably wearing and harrassing, and often 
very bloody in character, the scarred and tattered 
troops had broken and overthrown the most for- 
midable among the Indian tribes. Faithful, un- 
complaining, tmfiinching, the soldiers wearing the 
national uniform lived for many weary years at 
their lonely little posts, facing unending toil and 
danger with quiet endurance, surrounded by the 
desolation of vast solitudes, and menaced by the 
most merciless of foes. Hunting was followed 
not only as a sport, but also as the only means of 
keeping the posts and the expeditionary trains in 
meat. Many of the officers became equally pro- 
ficient as marksmen and hunters. The three most 
famous Indian fighters since the Civil War, Gen- 
erals Custer, Miles, and Crook, were all keen and 
successful followers of the chase. 

Of American big game the bison, almost always 
known as the buffalo, was the largest and most im- 
portant to man. When the first white settlers 



i6 The Wilderness Hunter 

landed in Virginia the bison ranged east of the 
Alleghanies almost to the sea-coast, westward to 
the dry deserts lying beyond the Rocky Mountains, 
northward to the Great Slave Lake and south- 
ward to Chihuahua. It was a beast of the forests 
and mountains, in the Alleghanies no less than in 
the Rockies ; but its true home was on the prairies 
and the high plains. Across these it roamed 
hither and thither, in herds of enormous, of in- 
credible, magnitude ; herds so large that they cov- 
ered the waving grass -land for hundreds of square 
leagues, and when on the march occupied days 
and days in passing a given point. But the seeth- 
ing myriads of shaggy-maned wild cattle vanished 
with remarkable and melancholy rapidity before 
the inroads of the white hunters and the steady 
march of the oncoming settlers. Now they are on 
the point of extinction. Two or three hundred 
are left in that great national game preserve, the 
Yellowstone Park ; and it is said that others still 
remain in the wintry desolation of Athabasca. 
Elsewhere, only a few individuals exist — probably 
considerably less than half a hundred all told — 
scattered in small parties in the wildest and most 
inaccessible portions of the Rocky Mountains. A 
bison bull is the largest American animal. His 
huge bulk, his short, curved black horns, the 
shaggy mane clothing his great neck and shoulders, 
give him a look of ferocity which his conduct be- 



The American Wilderness 17 

lies. Yet he is truly a grand and noble beast, 
and his loss from our prairies and forests is as 
keenly regretted by the lover of nature and of 
wild life as by the hunter. 

Next to the bison in size, and much superior in 
height to it and to all other American game — for 
it is taller than the tallest horse — comes the moose, 
or broad-horned elk. It is a strange, uncouth- 
looking beast, with very long legs, short, thick 
neck, a big, ungainly head, a swollen nose 
and huge shovel horns. Its home is in the 
cold, wet pine and spruce forests, which stretch 
from the subarctic region of Canada southward in 
certain places across our frontier. Two centuries 
ago it was found as far south as Massachusetts. It 
has now been exterminated from its former haunts 
in northern New York and Vermont, and is on the 
point of vanishing from northern Michigan, It is 
still found in northern Maine and northeastern 
Minnesota and in portions of northern Idaho and 
Washington; while along the Rockies it extends 
its range southward through western Montana to 
northwestern Wyoming, south of the Tetons. In 
1884 I saw the fresh hide of one that was killed in 
the Bighorn Mountains. 

The wapiti, or round-horned elk, like the bison, 
and unlike the moose, had its centre of abun- 
dance in the United States, though extending 
northward into Canada. Originally, its range 



VOL. I.— 2. 



1 8 The Wilderness Hunter 

reached from ocean to ocean and it went in herds 
of thousands of individuals; but it has suffered 
more from the persecution of hunters than any- 
other game except the bison. By the beginning 
of this century it had been exterminated in most 
locaHties east of the Mississippi; but a few hn- 
gered on for many years in the AUeghanies. Col- 
onel Cecil Clay informs me that an Indian whom 
he knew killed one in Pennsylvania in 1869. A 
very few still exist here and there in northern 
Michigan and Minnesota, and in one or two spots 
on the western boundary of Nebraska and the 
Dakotas; but it is now properly a beast of the 
wooded western mountains. It is still plentiful 
in western Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, 
and in parts of Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. 
Though not as large as the moose, it is the most 
beautiful and stately of all animals of the deer 
kind, and its antlers are marvels of symmetrical 
grandeur. 

The woodland caribou is inferior to the wapiti 
both in size and symmetry. The tips of the many 
branches of its long, irregular antlers are slightly 
palmated. Its range is the same as that of the 
moose, save that it does not go so far southward. 
Its hoofs are long and round; even larger than 
the long, oval hoofs of the moose, and much 
larger than those of the wapiti. The tracks of 
all three can be told apart at a glance, and can- 



The American Wilderness 19 

not be mistaken for the footprints of other game. 
Wapiti tracks, however, look much hke those of 
yearhng and two-year-old cattle, unless the 
ground is steep and muddy, in which case the 
marks of the false hoofs appear, the joints of 
wapiti being more flexible than those of domestic 
stock. 

The whitetail deer is now, as it always has 
been, the best known and most abundant of 
American big game, and though its numbers 
have been greatly thinned it is still found in 
almost every State of the Union. The common 
blacktail, or mule deer, which has likewise been 
sadly thinned in numbers, though once extra- 
ordinarily abundant, extends from the great 
plains to the Pacific; but is supplanted on the 
Puget Sound coast by the Columbian blacktail. 
The delicate, heart-shaped footprints of all three 
are nearly indistinguishable; when the animal is 
running the hoof-points are of course separated. 
The track of the antelope is more oval, growing 
squarer with age. Mountain sheep leave foot- 
marks of a squarer shape, the points of the hoof 
making little indentations in the soil, well apart, 
even when the animal is only walking; and a 
yearling's track is not unlike that made by a 
big prong-buck when striding rapidly with the 
toes well apart. White-goat tracks are also 
square, and as large as those of the sheep; but 



20 The Wilderness Hunter 

there is less indentation of the hoof -points, which 
come nearer together. 

The antelope, or prongbuck, was once found 
in abundance from the eastern edge of the great 
plains to the Pacific, but it has everywhere dimin- 
ished in numbers, and has been exterminated 
along the eastern and western borders of its for- 
mer range. The bighorn, or mountain sheep, is 
found in the Rocky Mountains from northern 
IMexico to Alaska ; and in the United States from 
the Coast and Cascade ranges to the Bad Lands 
of the western edges of the Dakotas, wherever 
there are mountain chains or tracts of rugged 
hills. It was never very abundant, and, though 
it has become less so, it has held its own better 
than most game. The white -goat, however, alone 
among our game animals, has positively increased 
in numbers since the advent of settlers; because 
white hunters rarely follow it, and the Indians 
who once sought its skin for robes now use blank- 
ets instead. Its true home is in Alaska and 
Canada, but it crosses our borders along the 
lines of the Rockies and Cascades, and a few 
small isolated colonies are found here and there 
southward to California and New Mexico. 

The cougar and wolf, once common through- 
out the United States, have now completely dis- 
appeared from all save the wildest regions. The 
black bear holds its own better; it was never 



The American Wilderness 21 

found on the great plains. The huge grisly ranges 
from the great plains to the Pacific. The little 
peccary, or Mexican wild hog, merely crosses our 
southern border. 

The finest hunting-ground in America was, and 
indeed is, the mountainous region of western 
Montana and northwestern Wyoming. In this 
high, cold land o"*^ lofty mountains, deep forests, 
and open prairies, with its beautiful lakes and 
rapid rivers, all the species of big game men- 
tioned above, except the peccary and Columbian 
blacktail, are to be found. Until 1880 they were 
very abundant, and they are still, with the ex- 
ception of the bison, fairly plentiful. On most 
of the long hunting expeditions which I made 
away from my ranch, I went into this region. 

The bulk of my hunting has been done in the 
cattle country, near my ranch on the Little Mis- 
souri, and in the adjoining lands round the lower 
Pow^der and Yellowstone. Until 1881 the valley 
of the Little Missouri was fairly thronged with 
game, and was absolutely unchanged in any re- 
spect from its original condition of primeval 
wildness. With the incoming of the stockmen 
all this changed, and the game was wofully 
slaughtered; but plenty of deer and antelope, a 
few sheep and bear, and an occasional elk are 
still left. 

Since the professional hunters have vanished 



22 The Wilderness Hunter 

with the vast herds of game on which they preyed, 
the Hfe of the ranchman is that which yields most 
chance of hunting. Life on a cattle ranch, on the 
great plains or among the foothills of the high 
mountains, has a peculiar attraction for those 
hardy, adventurous spirits who take most kindly 
to a vigorous out-of-door existence, and who are 
therefore most apt to care passionately for the 
chase of big game. The free ranchman Hves in 
a w^ld, lonely country, and exactly as he breaks 
and tames his own horses, and guards and tends 
his own branded herds, so he takes the keenest 
enjoyment in the chase, which is to him not 
merely the pleasantest of sports, but also a means 
of adding materially to his comforts, and often 
his only method of providing himself with fresh 
meat. 

Hunting in the wilderness is of all pastimes 
the most attractive, and it is doubly so when not 
carried on merely as a pastime. Shooting over 
a private game preserve is of course in no way to 
be compared to it. The wilderness hunter must 
not only show skill in the use of the rifle and ad- 
dress in finding and approaching game, but he 
must also show the qualities of hardihood, self- 
reliance, and resolution needed for effectively 
grappling with his wild surroundings. The fact 
that the hunter needs the game, both for its meat 
and for its hide, undoubtedly adds a zest to the 



The Wilderness Hunter 23 

pursuit. Among the hunts which I have most 
enjoyed were those made when I was engaged in 
getting in the winter's stock of meat for my ranch, 
or was keeping some party of cowboys suppHed 
with game from day to day. 



CHAPTER II 

HUNTING FROM THE RANCH ; THE BLACKTAIL DEER 



) 



NO life can be pleasanter than life during the 
months of fall on a ranch in the northern 
cattle country. The weather is cool; in 
the evenings and on the rare rainy days we are 
glad to sit by the great fireplace, with its roaring 
Cottonwood logs. But on most days not a cloud 
dims the serene splendor of the sky ; and the fresh 
pure air is clear with the wonderful clearness of 
the high plains. We are in the saddle from morn- 
ing to night.. 

The long, low, roomy ranch-house, of clean 
hewed logs, is as comfortable as it is bare and 
plain. We fare simply but well; for the wife of 
my foreman makes excellent bread and cake, and 
there are plenty of potatoes grown in the forlorn 
little garden-patch on the bottom. We also have 
jelHes and jams, made from wild plums and buf- 
falo berries ; and all the milk we can drink. For 
meat, we depend on our rifles ; and, with an occa- 
sional interlude of ducks or prairie-chickens, the 
mainstay of each meal is venison — roasted, 
broiled, or fried. 

24 



Hunting from the Ranch 25 

Sometimes we shoot the deer when we happen 
on them while about our ordinary business, — in- 
deed, throughout the time that I have lived on 
the ranch, very many of the deer and antelope 
I killed were thus obtained. Of course, while 
doing the actual round-up work it is impossible 
to attend to anything else ; but we generally carry 
rifles while riding after the saddle band in the 
early morning, while visiting the line camps, or 
while in the saddle among the cattle on the range, 
and get many a shot in this fashion. 

In the fall of 1890 some friends came to my 
ranch ; and one day we took them to see a round- 
up. The OX, a Texan steer-outfit, had sent a 
couple of wagons to work down the river, after 
beef cattle, and one of my men had gone along 
to gather any of my own scattered steers that were 
ready for shipping, and to brand the late calves. 
There were perhaps a dozen riders with the 
wagons ; and they were camped for the day on a 
big bottom where Blacktail and Whitetail creeks 
open into the river, several miles below my ranch. 

At dawn one of the men rode off to bring in 
the saddle band. The rest of us were up by sun- 
rise ; and as we stood on the verandah under the 
shimmering cotton wood trees, revelling in the 
blue and cloudless sky, and drinking in the cool 
air before going to breakfast, we saw the motley- 
colored string of ponies file down from the opposite 



26 The Wilderness Hunter 

bank of the river, and splash across the broad 
shallow ford in front of the ranch -house. Canter- 
ing and trotting, the band swept towards the high, 
round horse-corral, in the open glade to the rear 
of the house. Guided by the jutting wing which 
stuck out at right angles, they entered the open 
gate, which was promptly closed by the cowboy 
who had driven them in. 

After breakfast we strolled over to the corral, 
with our lariats, and, standing by the snubbing- 
post in the middle, roped the horses we wished for 
the party — some that were gentle, and others that 
were not. Then every man saddled his horse ; and 
at the moment of mounting for the start there was, 
as always, a thrill of mild excitement, each rider 
hoping that his own horse would not buck, and 
that his neighbor's would. I had no young horses 
on the ranch at the time; but a number of the 
older ones still possessed some of the least amiable 
traits of their youth. 

Once in the saddle we rode off down river, along 
the bottoms, crossing the stream again and again. 
We went in Indian file, as is necessary among the 
trees and in broken ground, following the cattle 
trails — which themselves had replaced or broad- 
ened the game paths that alone crossed the pla- 
teaus and bottoms when my ranch-house was first 
built. Now we crossed open reaches of coarse 
grass, thinly sprinkled with large, brittle cotton- 



Hunting from the Ranch 27 

wood trees, their branches torn and splintered; 
now we wound our way through a dense jungle 
where the gray, thorny buffalo bushes, spangled 
with brilliant red berry-clusters, choked the spaces 
between the thick-growing box-alders ; and again 
the sure-footed ponies scrambled down one cut 
bank and up another, through seemingly impos- 
sible rifts, or with gingerly footsteps trod a path 
which cut the side of a butte or overhung a bluff. 
Sometimes we racked, or shacked along at the 
fox trot which is the cow-pony's ordinary gait; 
and sometimes we loped or galloped and ran. 

At last we came to the ford beyond which the 
riders of the round-up had made their camp. In 
the bygone days of the elk and buffalo, when our 
branded cattle were first driven thus far north, 
this ford had been dangerous from quicksand; 
but the cattle, ever crossing and re-crossing, had 
trodden down and settled the sand, and had found 
out the firm places; so that it was now easy to 
get over. 

Close beyond the trees on the farther bank stood 
the two round-up wagons ; near by was the cook's 
fire, in a trench, so that it might not spread ; the 
bedding of the riders and horse-wranglers lay scat- 
tered about, each roll of blankets wrapped and 
corded in a stout canvas sheet. The cook was 
busy about the fire; the night-wrangler was 
snatching an hour or two 's sleep under one of 



28 The Wilderness Hunter 

the wagons. Half a mile away, on the plain of 
sage-brush and long grass, the day-wrangler was 
guarding the grazing or resting horse herd, of over 
a hundred head. Still farther distant, at the 
mouth of a ravine, was the day -herd of cattle, 
two or three cowboys watching it as they lolled 
drowsily in their saddles. The other riders were 
off on circles to bring in cattle to the round-up; 
they were expected every moment. 

With the ready hospitality always shown in 
a cow-camp we were pressed to alight and take 
dinner, or at least a lunch; and accordingly we 
jumped off our horses and sat down. Our tin 
plates were soon heaped with fresh beef, bread, 
tomatoes, rice, and potatoes, all very good; for 
the tall, bearded, scrawny cook knew his work, 
and the OX outfit always fed its men well — and 
saw that they worked well, too. 

Before noon the circle riders began to appear on 
the plain, coming out of the ravines, and scram- 
bling down the steep hills, singly or in twos and 
threes. They herded before them bunches of 
cattle, of varying size; these were driven to- 
gether and left in charge of a couple of cow- 
punchers. The other men rode to the wagon to 
get a hasty dinner — lithe, sinewy fellows, with 
weather-roughened faces and fearless eyes; their 
broad felt hats flapped as they galloped, and their 
spurs and bridle chains jingled. They rode well, 



Hunting from the Ranch 29 

with long stirrups, sitting straight in the deep 
stock saddles, and their wiry ponies showed no 
signs of fatigue from the long morning's ride. 

The horse-wrangler soon drove the saddle band 
to the wagons, where it was caught in a quickly 
improvised rope-corral. The men roped fresh 
horses, fitted for the cutting-work round the herd, 
with its attendant furious galloping and flash-like 
turning and twisting. In a few minutes all were 
in the saddle again and riding towards the cattle. 

Then began that scene of excitement and tur- 
moil, and seeming confusion, but real method and 
orderliness, so familiar to all who have engaged in 
stock-growing on the great plains. The riders 
gathered in a wide ring round the herd of uneasy 
cattle, and a couple of men rode into their midst 
to cut out the beef steers and the cows that were 
followed by unbranded calves. As soon as the 
animal was picked out the cowboy began to drive 
it slowly towards the outside of the herd, and 
when it was near the edge he suddenly raced it 
into the open. The beast would then start at 
full speed and try to double back among its fel- 
lows ; while the trained cow-pony followed like a 
shadow, heading it off at every turn. The riders 
round that part of the herd opened out and the 
chosen animal was speedily hurried off to some 
spot, a few hundred yards distant, where it was 
left under charge of another cowboy. The latter 



o 



o The Wilderness Hunter 



at first had his hands full in preventing his charge 
from rejoining the herd ; for cattle dread nothing 
so much as being separated from their comrades. 
However, as soon as two or three others were 
driven out, enough to form a little bunch, it be- 
came a much easier matter to hold the "cut," as 
it is called. The cows and calves were put in one 
place, the beeves in another; the latter were 
afterwards run into the day -herd. 

Meanwhile, from time to time some clean- 
limbed young steer or heifer, able to run like an 
antelope and double like a jack-rabbit, tried to 
break out of the herd that was being worked, 
when the nearest cowboy hurried in pursuit at top 
speed and brought it back, after a headlong, break- 
neck race, in which no heed was paid to brush, 
fallen timber, prairie-dog holes, or cut banks. The 
dust rose in little whirling clouds, and through it 
dashed bolting cattle and galloping cowboys, 
hither and thither, while the air was filled with the 
shouts and laughter of the men, and the bellowing 
of the herd. 

As soon as the herd was worked it was turned 
loose, while the cows and calves were driven over 
to a large corral, where the branding was done. A 
fire was speedily kindled, and in it were laid the 
branding-irons of the different outfits represented 
on the round-up. Then two of the best ropers 
rode into the corral and began to rope the calves, 



Hunting from the Ranch 31 

round the hind legs by preference, but sometimes 
round the head. The other men dismounted to 
"wrestle" and brand them. Once roped, the 
calf, bawling and struggling, was swiftly dragged 
near the fire, where one or two of the calf -wrestlers 
grappled with and threw the kicking, plunging lit- 
tle beast, and held it while it was branded. If the 
calf was large the wrestlers had hard work; and 
one or two young maverick bulls — that is, im- 
branded yearling bulls, which had been passed by 
in the round-ups of the preceding year — fought 
viciously, bellowing and charging, and driving 
some of the men up the sides of the corral, to the 
boisterous delight of the others. 

After watching the work for a little while we 
left and rode homewards. Instead of going along 
the river bottoms we struck back over the buttes. 
From time to time we came out on some sharp 
bluff overlooking the river. From these points of 
vantage we could see for several miles up and 
down the valley of the Little Missouri. The 
level bottoms were walled in by rows of sheer 
cliffs, and steep, grassy slopes. These bluff lines 
were from a quarter of a mile to a mile apart; 
they did not run straight, but in a succession of 
curves, so as to look like the halves of many am- 
phitheatres. Between them the river swept in 
great bends from side to side ; the wide bed, brim- 
ful during the time of freshets, now held but a thin 



32 The Wilderness Hunter 

stream of water. Some of the bottoms were cov- 
ered only with grass and sage-brush ; others with a 
dense jungle of trees; while yet others looked 
like parks, the cottonwoods growing in curved 
lines or in clumps scattered here and there. 

On our way we came across a bunch of cattle, 
among which the sharp eyes of my foreman de- 
tected a maverick two-year-old heifer. He and 
one of the cowboys at once got down their ropes 
and rode after her ; the rest of us first rounding up 
the bunch so as to give a fair start. After a sharp 
run, one of the men, swinging his lariat round his 
head, got close up ; in a second or two the noose 
settled round the heifer's neck, and as it became 
taut she was brought to with a jerk; immediately 
afterwards the other man made his throw and 
cleverly heeled her. In a trice the red heifer was 
stretched helpless on the ground, the two fierce 
little ponies, a pinto and a buckskin, keeping her 
down on their own account, tossing their heads 
and backing so that the ropes which led from the 
saddle-horns to her head and hind feet never 
slackened. Then we kindled a fire; one of the 
cinch rings was taken off to serve as a branding- 
iron, and the heifer speedily became our property 
— for she was on our range. 

When we reached the ranch it was still early, 
and after finishing dinner it lacked over an hour 
of sundown. Accordingly, we went for another 



Hunting from the Ranch 33 

ride; and I carried my rifle. We started up a 
winding coulie which opened back of the ranch- 
house ; and after half an hour's canter clambered 
up the steep head-ravines, and emerged on a high 
ridge which went westward, straight as an arrow, 
to the main divide between the Little Missouri 
and the Big Beaver. Along this narrow, grassy- 
crest we loped and galloped ; we were so high that 
we could look far and wide over all the country 
round about. To the southward, across a dozen 
leagues of rolling and broken prairie, loomed 
Sentinel Butte, the chief landmark of all that re- 
gion. Behind us, beyond the river, rose the weird 
chaos of Bad Lands which at this point lie for 
many miles east of the Little Missouri. Their 
fantastic outlines were marked against the sky as 
sharply as if cut with a knife ; their grim and for- 
bidding desolation warmed into wonderful beauty 
by the light of the dying sun. On our right, as we 
loped onwards, the land sunk away in smooth 
green-clad slopes and valleys; on our left it fell 
in sheer walls. Ahead of us the sun was sinking 
behind a mass of blood-red clouds ; and on either 
hand the flushed skies were changing their tint to 
a hundred hues of opal and amethyst. Our tire- 
less little horses sprang under us, thrilling with 
life; we were riding through a fairy world of 
beauty and color and limitless space and freedom. 
Suddenly, a short hundred yards in front, three 

VOL. I. — 3. 



4 The Wilderness Hunter 



blacktail leaped out of a little glen and crossed our 
path, with the pecuHar bounding gait of their 
kind. At once I sprang from my horse and, 
kneeling, fired at the last and largest of the three. 
My bullet sped too far back, but struck near the 
hip, and the crippled deer went slowly down a 
ravine. Running over a hillock to cut it off, I 
found it in some brush a few hundred yards be- 
yond and finished it with a second ball. Quickly 
dressing it, I packed it on my horse, and trotted 
back leading him; an hour afterwards we saw 
through the waning light the quaint, home-like 
outlines of the ranch-house. 

After all, however, blacktail can only at times be 
picked up by chance in this way. More often it is 
needful to kill them by fair still-hunting, among 
the hills or wooded mountains where they delight 
to dwell. If hunted, they speedily become wary. 
By choice they live in such broken country that 
it is difficult to pursue them with hounds; and 
they are by no means such water-loving animals 
as whitetail. On the other hand, the land in 
which they dwell is very favorable to the still 
hunter who does not rely merely on stealth, but 
who can walk and shoot well. They do not go on 
the open prairie, and, if possible, they avoid deep 
forests, while, being good climbers, they like hills. 
In the mountains, therefore, they keep to what is 
called park country, where glades alternate with 



The Blacktail Deer 35 

open groves. On the great plains they avoid both 
the heavily timbered river bottoms and the vast 
treeless stretches of level or rolling grass-land; 
their chosen abode being the broken and hilly re- 
gion, scantily wooded, which skirts almost every 
plains river and forms a belt — sometimes very nar- 
row, sometimes many miles in breadth — between 
the alluvial bottom land and the prairies beyond. 
In these Bad Lands dwarfed pines and cedars 
grow in the canyon-like ravines and among the 
high steep hills ; there are also basins and winding 
coulies, filled with brush and shrubbery and small 
elm or ash. In all such places the blacktail loves 
to make its home. 

I have not often hunted blacktail in the moun- 
tains, because while there I was generally after 
larger game ; but around my ranch I have killed 
more of them than of any other game, and for me 
their chase has always possessed a peculiar charm. 
We hunt them in the loveliest season of the year, 
the fall and early winter, when it is .keen pleasure 
merely to live out of doors. Sometimes we make 
a regular trip, of several days' duration, taking 
the ranch -wagon, with or without a tent, to some 
rugged and little disturbed spot where the deer 
are plenty; perhaps returning with eight or ten 
carcasses, or even more — enough to last a long 
while in cold weather. We often make such trips 
while laying in our winter supply of meat. 



36 The Wilderness Hunter 

At other times we hunt directly from the ranch- 
house. We catch our horses overnight, and are 
in the saddle for an all-day's hunt long before the 
first streak of dawn, possibly not returning until 
some hours after nightfall. The early morning 
and late evening are the best times for hunting 
game, except in regions where it is hardly ever 
molested, and where in consequence it moves 
about more or less throughout the day. 

During the rut, which begins in September, the 
deer are in constant motion, and are often found 
in bands. The necks of the bucks swell and their 
sides grow gaunt; they chase the does all night 
and their flesh becomes strong and stringy — far 
inferior to that of the barren does and yearlings. 
The old bucks then wage desperate conflicts with 
one another, and bully their smaller brethren un- 
mercifully. Unlike the elk, the blacktail, like the 
whitetail, are generally silent in the rutting season. 
They occasionally grunt when fighting ; and once, 
on a fall evening, I heard two young bucks bark- 
ing in a ravine back of my ranch-house, and crept 
up and shot them; but this was a wholly excep- 
tional instance. 

At this time I hunt on foot, only using the horse 
to carry me to and from the hunting-ground ; for 
while rutting, the deer, being restless, do not try 
to escape observation by lying still, and on the 
other hand are apt to wander about and so are 



The Blacktail Deer 37 

easily seen from a distance. When I have 
reached a favorable place I picket my horse and 
go from vantage point to vantage point, carefully 
scanning the hillsides, ravines, and brush coulies 
from every spot that affords a wide outlook. The 
quarry once seen, it may be a matter of hours, or 
only of minutes, to approach it, accordingly as the 
wind and cover are or are not favorable. The 
walks for many miles over the hills, the exercise 
of constant watchfulness, the excitement of the 
actual stalk, and the still greater excitement of 
the shot, combine to make still-hunting the black- 
tail, in the sharp fall weather, one of the most 
attractive of hardy outdoor sports. Then, after 
the long, stumbling walk homewards, through the 
cool gloom of the late evening, comes the meal of 
smoking venison and milk and bread, and the 
sleepy rest, lying on the bear-skins, or sitting in 
the rocking-chair before the roaring fire, while 
the icy wind moans outside. 

Earlier in the season, while the does are still 
nursing the fawns, and until the bucks have 
cleaned the last vestiges of velvet from their ant- 
lers, the deer lie very close, and wander round as 
little as may be. In the spring and early summer, 
in the ranch country, we hunt big game very 
little, and then only antelope ; because in hunting 
antelope there is no danger of killing aught but 
bucks. About the first of August we begin to 



38 The Wilderness Hunter 

hunt blacktail, but do not kill does until a month 
later — and then only when short of meat. In the 
early weeks of the deer season we frequently do 
even the actual hunting on horseback instead of 
on foot ; because the deer at this time rarely ap- 
pear in view, so as to afford chance for a stalk, 
and yet are reluctant to break cover until very 
closely approached. In consequence, we keep on 
our horses, and so get over much more ground 
than on foot, beating through or beside all likely 
looking cover, with the object of jumping the deer 
close by. Under such circumstances bucks some- 
times lie until almost trodden on. 

One afternoon in mid- August, when the ranch 
was entirely out of meat, I started with one of 
my cow-hands, Merrifield, to kill a deer. We were 
on a couple of stout, quiet ponies, accustomed to 
firing and to packing game. After riding a mile 
or two down the bottoms we left the river and 
struck off up a winding valley, which led back 
among the hills. In a short while we were in a 
blacktail country, and began to keep a sharp look- 
out for game, riding parallel to, but some little 
distance from, one another. The sun, beating 
down through the clear air, was very hot; the 
brown slopes of short grass, and still more the 
white clay walls of the Bad Lands, threw the heat 
rays in our faces. We skirted closely all likely- 
looking spots, such as the heavy brush-patches in 



The Blacktail Deer 39 

the bottoms of the winding valleys, and the groves 
of ash and elm in the basins and pockets flanking 
the high plateaus ; sometimes we followed a cattle 
trail which ran down the middle of a big washout, 
and again we rode along the brink of a deep cedar 
canyon. After a while we came to a coulie with 
a small muddy pool at its mouth ; and round this 
pool there was much fresh deer sign. The coulie 
was but half a mile long, heading into and flanked 
by the spurs of some steep, bare hills. Its bot- 
tom, which was fifty yards or so across, was 
choked by a dense growth of brush, chiefly thorny 
bullberries, while the sides were formed by cut 
banks twelve or fifteen feet high. My companion 
rode up the middle, while I scrambled up one of 
the banks, and, dismounting, led my horse along 
its edge, that I might have a clear shot at what- 
ever we roused. We went nearly to the head, and 
then the cowboy reined up and shouted to me that 
he "guessed there were no deer in the coulie." 
Instantly there was a smashing in the young trees 
midway between us, and I caught a glimpse of 
a blacktail buck speeding round a shoulder of 
the cut bank: and though I took a hurried shot 
I missed. However, another buck promptly 
jumped up from the same place; evidently, the 
two had lain secure in their day-beds, shielded by 
the dense cover, while the cowboy rode by them, 
and had only risen when he halted and began to 



40 The Wilderness Hunter 

call to me across them. This second buck, a fine 
fellow with big antlers not yet clear of velvet, 
luckily ran up the opposite bank and I got a fair 
shot at him as he galloped broadside to me along 
the open hillside. When I fired he rolled over 
with a broken back. As we came up he bleated 
loudly, an unusual thing for a buck to do. 

Now, these two bucks must have heard us com- 
ing, but reckoned on our passing them by with- 
out seeing them ; which we would have done had 
they not been startled when the cowboy halted 
and spoke. Later in the season they would prob- 
ably not have let us approach them, but would 
have run as soon as they knew of our presence. 
Of course, however, even later in the season a 
man may by chance stumble across a deer close 
by. I remember one occasion when my ranch 
partner, Robert Munro Ferguson, and I almost 
corralled an unlucky deer in a small washout. 

It was October, and our meat supply unexpect- 
edly gave out; on our ranch, as on most ranches, 
an occasional meat famine of three or four days 
intervenes between the periods of plenty. So 
Ferguson and I started together to get venison; 
and at the end of two days' hard work, leaving the 
ranch by sunrise, riding to the hunting-grounds 
and tramping steadily until dark, we succeeded. 
The weather was stormy and there were continual 
gusts of wind and of cold rain, sleet, or snow. 



The Blacktail Deer 41 

We hunted through a large tract of rough and 
broken country, six or eight miles from the ranch. 
As often happens in such wild weather, the deer 
were wild too; they were watchful and were on 
the move all the time. We saw a number, but 
either they ran off before we could get a shot, or 
if we did fire it was at such a distance or under 
such unfavorable circumstances that we missed. 
At last, as we were plodding drearily up a bare 
valley, the sodden mud caking round our shoes, 
we roused three deer from the mouth of a short 
washout but a few paces from us. Two bounded 
off; the third by mistake rushed into the wash- 
out, where he found himself in a regular trap and 
was promptly shot by my companion. We slung 
the carcass on a pole and carried it down to where 
we had left the horses ; and then we loped home- 
wards, bending to the cold slanting rain. 

Although in places where it is much persecuted 
the blacktail is a shy and wary beast, the success- 
ful pursuit of which taxes to the uttermost the 
skill and energy of the hunter, yet, like the elk, 
if little molested it often shows astonishing tame- 
ness and even stupidity. In the Rockies I have 
sometimes come on blacktail within a very short 
distance, which would merely stare at me, then 
trot off a few yards, turn and stare again, and 
wait for several minutes before really taking alarm. 
What is much more extraordinary, I have had the 



42 The Wilderness Hunter 

same thing happen to me in certain little hunted 
localities in the neighborhood of my ranch, even 
of recent years. In the fall of 1890, 1 was riding 
down a canyon-coulie with my foreman, Sylvane 
Ferris, and a young friend from Boston, when we 
almost rode over a barren blacktail doe. She only 
ran some fifty yards, round a corner of the coulie, 
and then turned and stood until we ran forward 
and killed her — for we were in need of fresh meat. 
One October, a couple of years before this, my 
cousin. West Roosevelt, and I took a trip with 
the wagon to a very wild and rugged country, 
some twenty miles from the ranch. We found 
that the deer had evidently been but little dis- 
turbed. One day while scrambling down a steep, 
brushy hill, leading my horse, I came close on a 
doe and fawn; they merely looked at me with 
curiosity for some time, and then sauntered slowly 
off, remaining within shot for at least five min- 
utes. Fortunately, we had plenty of meat at the 
time, and there was no necessity to harm the 
graceful creatures. A few days later we came on 
two bucks sunning themselves in the bottom of 
a valley. My companion killed one. The other 
was lying but a dozen rods off ; yet it never moved, 
until several shots had been fired at the first. It 
was directly under me, and in my anxiety to avoid 
overshooting, to my horror I committed the op- 
posite fault, and away went the buck. 



The Blacktail Deer 43 

Every now and then any one will make most 
unaccountable misses. A few days after thus 
losing the buck, I spent nearly twenty cartridges 
in butchering an unfortunate yearling, and only 
killed it at all because it became so bewildered by 
the firing that it hardly tried to escape. I never 
could tell why I used so many cartridges to such 
little purpose. During the next fortnight I killed 
seven deer without making a single miss, though 
some of the shots were rather difficult. 



CHAPTER III 

THE WHITETAIL DEER; AND THE BLACKTAIL OF 

THE COLUMBIA 

THE whitetail deer is much the commonest 
game animal of the United States, being 
still found, though generally in greatly- 
diminished numbers, throughout most of the 
Union. It is a shrewd, wary, knowing beast ; but 
it owes its prolonged stay in the land chiefly to 
the fact that it is an inveterate skulker, and fond 
of the thickest cover. Accordingly, it usually has 
to be killed by stealth and stratagem, and not by 
fair, manly hunting; being quite easily slain in 
any one of half a dozen unsportsmanlike ways. 
In consequence, I care less for its chase than for 
the chase of any other kind of American big game. 
Yet in the few places where it dwells in open, hilly 
forests, and can be killed by still-hunting as if it 
were a blacktail — or, better still, where the nature 
of the ground is such that it can be run down in 
fair chase on horseback, either with greyhounds 
or with a pack of trackhounds, it yields splendid 
sport. 

Killing a deer from a boat while the poor ani- 

44 



The Whitetail Deer 45 

mal is swimming in the water, or on snow-shoes 
as it flounders helplessly in the deep drifts, can 
only be justified on the plea of hunger. This is 
also true of lying in wait at a lick. Whoever in- 
dulges in any of these methods save from neces- 
sity, is a butcher, pure and simple, and has no 
business in the company of true sportsmen. 

Fire hunting may be placed in the same cate- 
gory; yet it is possibly allowable under excep- 
tional circumstances to indulge in a fire hunt, if 
only for the sake of seeing the wilderness by torch- 
light. My first attempt at big-game shooting, 
when a boy, was "jacking" for deer in the Adi- 
rondacks, on a pond or small lake surrounded by 
the grand northern forests of birch and beech, 
pine, spruce, and fir. I killed a spike buck; and 
while I have never been willing to kill another in 
this manner, I cannot say that I regret having 
once had the experience. The ride over the 
glassy, black water, the witchcraft of such silent 
progress through the mystery of the night, cannot 
but impress one. There is pleasure in the mere 
buoyant gliding of the birch-bark canoe, with its 
curved bow and stern; nothing else that floats 
possesses such grace, such frail and delicate beauty 
as this true craft of the wilderness, which is as 
much a creature of the wild woods as the deer and 
bear themselves. The light streaming from the 
bark lantern in the bow cuts a glaring lane through 



46 The Wilderness Hunter 

the gloom ; in it all objects stand out like magic, 
shining for a moment white and ghastly and then 
vanishing into the impenetrable darkness; while 
all the time the paddler in the stern makes not so 
much as a ripple, and there is never a sound but 
the occasional splash of a muskrat, or the moan- 
ing uloo-oo — uloo-uloo of an owl from the deep 
forests, and at last, perchance, the excitement of 
a shot at a buck, standing at gaze, with luminous 
eyeballs. 

The most common method of killing the white- 
tail is by hounding; that is, by driving it with 
hounds past runways where hunters are stationed 
• — for all wild animals when on the move prefer 
to follow certain definite routes. This is a legiti- 
mate, but inferior, kind of sport. 

However, even killing driven deer may be good 
fun at certain times. Most of the whitetail we 
kill round the ranch are obtained in this fashion. 
On the Little Missouri — as throughout the plains 
country generally — these deer cling to the big 
wooded river bottoms, while the blacktail are 
found in the broken country back from the river. 
The tangled mass of cottonwoods, box-alders, and 
thorny bullberry bushes which cover the bottoms 
afford the deer a nearly secure shelter from the 
still-hunter; and it is only by the aid of hoimds 
that they can be driven from their wooded fast- 
nesses. They hold their ow^n better than any 



The Whitetail Deer 47 

other game. The great herds of buffalo and the 
bands of elk have vanished completely; the 
swarms of antelope and blacktail have been wo- 
fully thinned ; but the whitetail, which were never 
found in such throngs as either buffalo or elk, 
blacktail or antelope, have suffered far less from 
the advent of the white hunters, ranchmen, and 
settlers. They are, of course, not as plentiful as 
formerly ; but some are still to be found in almost 
all their old haunts. Where the river, winding 
between rows of high buttes, passes my ranch- 
house, there is a long succession of heavily- wooded 
bottoms; and on all of these, even on the one 
whereon the house itself stands, there are a good 
many whitetail yet left. 

When we take a day's regular hunt we usually 
wander afar, either to the hills after blacktail or 
to the open prairie after antelope. But if we are 
short of meat, and yet have no time for a regular 
hunt, being perhaps able to spare only a couple 
of hours after the day's work is over, then all 
hands turn out to drive a bottom for whitetail. 
We usually have one or tw^o trackhounds at the 
ranch ; true southern deerhounds, black and tan, 
with lop ears and hanging lips, their wrinkled faces 
stamped with an expression of almost ludicrous 
melancholy. They are not fast, and have none 
of the alert look of the pied and spotted modem 
foxhound; but their noses are very keen, their 



48 The Wilderness Hunter 

voices deep and mellow, and they are wonderfully 
staunch on a trail. 

All is bustle and laughter as we start on such a 
hunt. The baying hounds bound about as the 
rifles are taken down ; the wiry ponies are roped 
out of the corral, and each broad-hatted hunter 
swings joyfully into the saddle. If the pony 
bucks or " acts mean" the rider finds that his rifle 
adds a new element of interest to the perform- 
ance, which is, of course, hailed with loud delight 
by all the men on quiet horses. Then we splash 
off over the river, scramble across the faces of the 
bluffs, or canter along the winding cattle paths, 
through the woods, until we come to the bottom 
we intend to hunt. Here a hunter is stationed at 
each runway along which it is deemed likely that 
the deer will pass; and one man, who has re- 
mained on horseback, starts into the cover with 
the hounds; occasionally this horseman himself, 
skilled, as most cowboys are, in the use of the re- 
volver, gets a chance to kill a deer. The deep 
baying of the hounds speedily gives warning that 
the game is afoot ; and the watching hunters, who 
have already hid their horses carefully, look to 
their rifles. Sometimes the deer comes far ahead 
of the dogs, running very swiftly with neck 
stretched straight out ; and if the cover is thick, 
such an animal is hard to hit. At other times, 
especially if the quarry is a young buck, it plays 



The Whitetail Deer 49 

along not very far ahead of its baying pursuers, 
bounding and strutting with head up and white 
flag flaunting. If struck hard, down goes the flag 
at once, and the deer plunges into a staggering 
run, while the hounds yell with eager ferocity as 
they follow the bloody trail. Usually we do not 
have to drive more than one or two bottoms be- 
fore getting a deer, which is forthwith packed 
behind one of the riders, as the distance is not 
great, and home we come in triumph. Some- 
times, however, we fail to find game, or the deer 
take unguarded passes, or the shot is missed. 
Occasionally I have killed deer on these hunts; 
generally I have merely sat still a long while, lis- 
tened to the hounds, and at last heard somebody 
else shoot. In fact, such hunting, though good 
enough fun if only tried rarely, would speedily 
pall if followed at all regularly. 

Personally, the chief excitement I have had in 
connection therewith has arisen from some antic 
of my horse; a half -broken bronco is apt to be- 
come tmnerved when a man with a gun tries to 
climb on him in a hurry. On one hunt, in 1890, 
I rode a wild animal named Whitefoot. He had 
been a confirmed and very bad bucker three 
years before, when I had him in my string on 
the round-up ; but had grown quieter with years. 
Nevertheless, I found he had some fire left ; for a 
hasty vault into the saddle on my part was 



50 The Wilderness Hunter 

followed on his by some very resolute pitching. I 
lost my rifle and hat, and my revolver and knife 
were bucked out of my belt; but I kept my 
seat all right, and finally got his head up and 
mastered him without letting him throw himself 
over backwards, a trick he sometimes practised. 
Nevertheless, in the first jump, when I was taken 
unawares, I strained myself across the loins, and 
did not get entirely over it for six months. 

To shoot running game with the rifle, it is al- 
ways necessary to be a good and quick marksman ; 
for it is never easy to kill an animal, when in rapid 
motion, with a single bullet. If on a runway, a 
man who is a fairly skilful rifleman has plenty of 
time for a clear shot, on open ground, at com- 
paratively short distance, say under eighty yards, 
and if the deer is cantering he ought to hit; at 
least, I generally do under such circumstances, by 
remembering to hold well forward — in fact, just in 
front of the deer's chest. But I do not always 
kill, by any means ; quite often when I thought I 
held far enough ahead, my bullet has gone into 
the buck's hips or loins. However, one great 
feature in the use of dogs is that they enable one 
almost always to recover wounded game. 

If the animal is running at full speed a long 
distance off, the difficulty of hitting is, of course, 
very much increased ; and if the country is open 
the value of a repeating rifle is then felt. If the 



The Whitetail Deer 51 

game is bounding over logs or dodging through 
underbrush, the difficuhy is again increased. 
Moreover, the natural gait of the different kinds 
of game must be taken into account. Of course, 
the larger kinds, such as elk and moose, are the 
easiest to hit; then comes the antelope, in spite 
of its swiftness, and the sheep, because of the even- 
ness of their running ; then the whitetail, with its 
rolling gallop; and last and hardest of all, the 
blacktail, because of its extraordinary stiff -legged 
bounds. 

Sometimes on a runway the difficulty is not that 
the game is too far, but that it is too close ; for a 
deer may actually almost jump on the hunter, 
surprising him out of all accuracy of aim. Once 
something of the sort happened to me. 

Winter was just beginning. I had been off with 
the ranch-wagon on a last round-up of the beef 
steers ; and had suffered a good deal, as one always 
does on these cold-weather round-ups, sleeping 
out in the snow, wrapped up in blankets and tar- 
paulin, with no tent and generally no fire. More- 
over, I became so weary of the interminable 
length of the nights, that I almost ceased to mind 
the freezing misery of standing night-guard round 
the restless cattle; while roping, saddling, and 
mastering the rough horses each morning, with 
numbed and stiffened limbs, though warming to 
the blood, was harrowing to the temper. 



52 The Wilderness Hunter 

On my return to the ranch I found a strange 
hunter staying there — a clean, square-built, hon- 
est-looking little fellow, but evidently not a native 
American. As a rule, nobody displays much curi- 
osity about any one's else antecedents in the Far 
West; but I happened to ask my foreman who 
the newcomer was, — chiefly because the said new- 
comer, evidently appreciating the warmth and 
comfort of the clean, roomy, ranch-house, with 
its roaring fires, books, and good fare, seemed in- 
clined to make a permanent stay, according to the 
custom of the country. My foreman, who had a 
large way of looking at questions of foreign eth- 
nology and geography, responded with indiffer- 
ence: "Oh, he's a kind of a Dutchman; but he 
hates the other Dutch, mortal. He's from an 
island Germany took from France in the last 
war!" This seemed puzzling; but it turned out 
that the "island" in question was Alsace. Na- 
tive Americans predominate among the dwellers 
in and on the borders of the wilderness, and in the 
wild country over which the great herds of the 
cattlemen roam ; and they take the lead in every 
way. The sons of the Germans, Irish, and other 
European newcomers are usually quick to claim 
to be "straight United States," and to disavow 
all kinship with the fellow-countrymen of their 
fathers. Once, while with a hunter bearing a 
German name, we came by chance on a German 



The Whitetail Deer 53 

hunting party from one of the eastern cities. One 
of them remarked to my companion that he must 
be part German himself, to which he cheerfully 
answered: "Well, my father was a Dutchman, 
but my mother was a white woman ! I 'm pretty 
white myself!" whereat the Germans glowered at 
him gloomily. 

As we were out of meat, the Alsatian and one 
of the cowboys and I started down the river with 
a wagon. The first day in camp it rained hard, 
so that we could not hunt. Towards evening we 
grew tired of doing nothing, and as the rain had 
become a mere fine drizzle, we sallied out to drive 
one of the bottoms for whitetail. The cowboy 
and our one trackhotmd plunged into the young 
Cottonwood, which grew thickly over the sandy 
bottom; while the little hunter and I took our 
stands on a cut bank, twenty feet high and half 
a mile long, which hedged in the trees from be- 
hind. Three or four game trails led up through 
steep, narrow clefts in this bank ; and we tried to 
watch these. Soon I saw a deer in an opening 
below, headed towards one end of the bank, 
round which another game trail led; and I ran 
hard towards this end, where it turned into a 
knife-like ridge of clay. About fifty yards from 
the point there must have been some slight irreg- 
ularities in the face of the bank, enough to give 
the deer a foothold ; for as I ran along the animal 



54 The Wilderness Hunter 

suddenly bounced over the crest, so close that I 
could have hit it with my right hand. As I tried 
to pull up short and swing round, my feet slipped 
from under me in the wet clay, and down I went ; 
while the deer literally turned a terrified somer- 
sault backwards. I flung myself to the edge and 
missed a hurried shot as it raced back on its track. 
Then, wheeling, I saw the little hunter running 
towards me along the top of the cut bank, his 
face on a broad grin. He leaped over one of the 
narrow clefts, up which a game trail led; and 
hardly was he across before the frightened deer 
bolted up it, not three yards from his back. He 
did not turn, in spite of my shouting and hand- 
waving, and the frightened deer, in the last stage 
of panic at finding itself again almost touching 
one of its foes, sped off across the grassy slopes 
like a quarter horse. When at last the hunter 
did turn, it was too late ; and our long-range fusil- 
lade proved harmless. During the next two days 
I redeemed myself, killing four deer. 

Coming back, our wagon broke down, no un- 
usual incident in ranchland, where there is often 
no road, while the strain is great in hauling 
through quicksands, and up or across steep, 
broken hills ; it rarely makes much difference be- 
yond the temporary delay, for plainsmen and 
mountainmen are very handy and self-helpful. 
Besides, a mere breakdown sinks into nothing 



The Whitetail Deer 55 

compared to having the team play out ; which is, 
of course, most apt to happen at the times when 
it insures hardship and suffering, as in the middle 
of a snowstorm, or when crossing a region with 
no water. However, the reinsmen of the plains 
must needs face many such accidents, not to speak 
of runaways, or having the wagon pitchpole over 
on to the team in dropping down too steep a hill- 
side. Once, after a three days' rainstorm, some of 
us tried to get the ranch -wagon along a trail which 
led over the ridge of a gumbo or clay butte. The 
sticky stuff clogged our shoes, the horses' hoofs, 
and the wheels; and it was even more slippery 
than it was sticky. Finally, we struck a sloping 
shoulder ; with great struggling, pulling, pushing, 
and shouting, we reached the middle of it, and 
then, as one of my men remarked, "the whole 
darned outfit slid into the coulie." 

These hunting trips after deer or antelope with 
the wagon usually take four or five days. I al- 
ways ride some tried hunting norse ; and the 
wagon itself, when on such a hunt, is apt to lead 
a chequered career, as half the time there is not 
the vestige of a trail to follow. Moreover, we 
often make a hunt when the good horses are on 
the round-up, or otherwise employed, and we have 
to get together a scrub team of cripples or else 
of outlaws — vicious devils, only used from dire 
need. The best teamster for such a hunt that 



56 The Wilderness Hunter 

we ever had on the ranch was a weather-beaten 
old fellow, known as "Old Man Tompkins." 
In the course of a long career as lumberman, 
plains teamster, buffalo - hunter, and Indian 
fighter, he had passed several years as a Rocky 
Mountain stage-driver ; and a stage-driver of the 
Rockies is of necessity a man of such skill and 
nerve that he fears no team and no country. No 
matter how wild the unbroken horses. Old Tomp- 
kins never asked help ; and he hated to drive less 
than a four-in-hand. When he once had a grip 
on the reins, he let no one hold the horses' heads. 
All he wished was an open plain for the rush at 
the beginning. The first plunge might take the 
wheelers' forefeet over the crossbars of the 
leaders, but he never stopped for that ; on went 
the team, running, bounding, rearing, tumbling, 
while the wagon leaped behind, until gradually 
things straightened out of their own accord. I 
soon found, however, that I could not allow him 
to carry a rifle; for he was an inveterate game 
butcher. In the presence of game the old fellow 
became fairly wild with excitement, and forgot 
the years and rheumatism which had crippled 
him. Once, after a long and tiresome day's hunt, 
we were walking home together ; he was carrying 
his boots in his hands, bemoaning the fact that 
his feet hurt him. Suddenly a whitetail jumped 
up; down dropped Old Tompkins's boots, and 



The Whitetail Deer 57 

away he went like a college sprinter, entirely- 
heedless of stones and cactus. By some indis- 
criminate firing at long range we dropped the deer ; 
and as Old Tompkins cooled down he realized 
that his bare feet had paid full penalty for his dash. 
One of these wagon trips I remember because 
I missed a fair running shot which I much de- 
sired to hit, and afterwards hit a very much more 
difficult shot about which I cared very little. 
Ferguson and I, with Sylvane and one or two 
others, had gone a day's journey down the river 
for a hunt. We went along the bottoms, cross- 
ing the stream every mile or so, with an occasional 
struggle through mud or quicksand, or up the 
steep, rotten banks. An old buffalo-hunter drove 
the wagon, with a couple of shaggy, bandy-legged 
ponies; the rest of us jogged along in front on 
horseback, picking out a trail through the bot- 
toms and choosing the best crossing-places. Some 
of the bottoms were grassy pastures ; on others, 
great, gnarled cottonwoods, with shivered branches, 
stood in clumps; yet others were choked with a 
true forest growth. Late in the afternoon we 
went into camp, choosing a spot where the cotton- 
woods were young; their glossy leaves trembled 
and rustled unceasingly. We speedily picketed 
the horses, — changing them about as they ate 
off the grass, — drew water, and hauled great logs 
in front of where we had pitched the tent, while 



58 The Wilderness Hunter 

the wagon stood nearby. Each man laid out his 
bed; the food and kitchen kit were taken from 
the wagon; supper was cooked and eaten; and 
we then lay round the camp-fire, gazing into it, or 
up at the brilliant stars, and listening to the wild, 
mournful wailing of the coyotes. They were very- 
plentiful round this camp; before sunrise and 
after sundown they called unceasingly. 

Next day I took a long tramp and climb after 
mountain sheep and missed a running shot at a 
fine ram, about a hundred yards off; or, rather, 
I hit him and followed his bloody trail a couple 
of miles, but failed to find him; whereat I re- 
turned to camp much cast down. 

Early the following morning, Sylvane and I 
started for another hunt, this time on horseback. 
The air was crisp and pleasant ; the beams of the 
just-risen sun struck sharply on the umber-col- 
ored hills and white cliff walls guarding the river, 
bringing into high relief their strangely carved and 
channelled fronts. Below camp the river was 
little but a succession of shallow pools strung 
along the broad, sandy bed, which in springtime 
was filled from bank to bank with foaming muddy 
water. Two mallards sat in one of these pools; 
and I hit one with the rifle, so nearly missing that 
the ball scarcely ruffled a feather; yet in some 
way the shock told, for the bird, after flying thirty 
yards, dropped on the sand. 



The Whitetail Deer 59 

Then we left the river and our active ponies 
scrambled up a small canyon-like break in the 
bluffs. All day we rode among the hills; some- 
times across rounded slopes, matted with short 
buffalo grass; sometimes over barren buttes of 
red or white clay, where only sage-brush and cac- 
tus grew; or beside deep ravines, black with 
stunted cedar ; or along beautiful winding coulies, 
where the grass grew rankly, and the thickets of 
ash and wild plum made brilliant splashes of red 
and yellow and tender green. Yet we saw nothing. 

As evening drew on, we rode riverwards; we 
slid down the steep bluff walls, and loped across a 
great bottom of sage-brush and tall grass, our 
horses now and then leaping like cats over the 
trunks of dead cottonwoods. As we came to the 
brink of the cut bank which forms the hither 
boundary of the river in freshet time, we suddenly 
saw two deer, a doe and a well-grown fawn — of 
course, long out of the spotted coat. They were 
walking with heads down along the edge of a sand- 
bar, near a pool, on the farther side of the stream 
bed, over two hundred yards distant. They saw 
us at once, and turning, galloped away with 
flags aloft, the pictures of springing, vigorous 
beauty. I jumped off my horse in an instant, 
knelt, and covered the fawn. It was going 
straight away from me, running very evenly, and 
I drew a coarse sight at the tip of the white flag. 



6o The Wilderness Hunter 

As I pulled trigger down went the deer, the ball 
having gone into the back of its head. The dis- 
tance was a good three hundred yards ; and while, 
of course, there was much more chance than skill 
in the shot, I felt well pleased with it — though I 
could not help a regret that while making such a 
difficult shot at a mere whitetail, I should have 
missed a much easier shot at a noble bighorn. 
Not only I, but all the camp, had a practical in- 
terest in my success; for we had no fresh meat, 
and a fat whitetail fawn, killed in October, yields 
the best of venison. So, after dressing the deer, 
I slung the carcass behind my saddle, and we rode 
swiftly back to camp through the dark ; and that 
evening we feasted on the juicy roasted ribs. 

The degree of tameness and unsuspiciousness 
shown by whitetail deer depends, of course, upon 
the amount of molestation to which they are ex- 
posed. Their times for sleeping, feeding, and com- 
ing to water, vary from the same cause. Where 
they are little persecuted they feed long after sim- 
rise and before sunset, and drink when the sun is 
high in the heavens, sometimes even at midday; 
they then show but little fear of man, and speed- 
ily become indifferent to the presence of deserted 
dwellings. 

In the cattle country the ranch-houses are often 
shut during the months of warm weather, when 
the round-ups succeed one another without inter- 



The Whitetail Deer 6i 

mission, as the calves must be branded, the beeves 
gathered and shipped, long trips made to collect 
strayed animals, and the trail stock driven from 
the breeding- to the fattening-grounds. At that 
time all the menfolk may have to be away in the 
white-topped wagons, working among the horned 
herds, whether plodding along the trail, or wan- 
dering to and fro on the range. Late one sum- 
mer, when my own house had been thus closed 
for many months, I rode thither with a friend to 
pass a week. The place already wore the look of 
having slipped away from the domain of man. 
The wild forces, barely thrust back beyond the 
threshhold of our habitation, were prompt to 
spring across it to renewed possession the moment 
we withdrew. The rank grass grew tall in the 
yard and on the sodded roofs of the stable and 
sheds ; the weather-beaten log walls of the house 
itself were one in tint with the trunks of the 
gnarled cottonwoods by which it was shaded. 
Evidently, the woodland creatures had come to 
regard the silent, deserted buildings as mere out- 
growths of the wilderness, no more to be feared 
than the trees around them, or the gray, strangely- 
shaped buttes behind. 

Lines of delicate, heart-shaped footprints in the 
muddy reaches of the half -dry river-bed showed 
where the deer came to water ; and in the dusky 
cattle trails among the ravines many round tracks 



62 The Wilderness Hunter 

betrayed the passing and repassing of timber 
wolves, — once or twice in the late evening we lis- 
tened to their savage and melancholy howling. 
Cottontail rabbits burrowed under the verandah. 
Within doors the bushy -tailed pack-rats had pos- 
session, and at night they held a perfect witches' 
sabbath in the garret and kitchen; while a little 
white-footed mouse, having dragged half the stuf- 
fing out of a mattress, had made thereof a big 
fluffy nest, entirely filling the oven. 

Yet, in spite of the abundant sign of game, we 
at first suffered under one of those spells of ill- 
luck which at times befall all hunters, and for 
several days we could kill nothing, though we 
tried hard, being in need of fresh meat. The 
moon was full — each evening, sitting on the ranch 
verandah, or walking homeward, we watched it 
rise over the line of bluffs beyond the river — and 
the deer were feeding at night ; moreover, in such 
hot weather they lie very close, move as little as 
possible, and are most difficult to find. Twice we 
lay out from dusk until dawn, in spite of the mos- 
quitoes, but saw nothing ; and the chances we did 
get we failed to profit by. 

One morning, instead of trudging out to hunt, 
I stayed at home, and sat in a rocking-chair on the 
verandah reading, rocking, or just sitting still lis- 
tening to the low rustling of the cottonwood 
branches overhead, and gazing across the river. 



The Columbian Blacktail Deer 63 

Through the still, clear, hot air, the faces of the 
bluffs shone dazzling white; no shadow fell from 
the cloudless sky on the grassy slopes, or on the 
groves of timber ; only the far-away cooing of a 
mourning dove broke the silence. Suddenly my 
attention was arrested by a slight splashing in the 
water; glancing up from my book I saw three 
deer, which had come out of the thick fringe of 
bushes and young trees across the river, and were 
strolling along the sand-bars directly opposite me. 
Slipping stealthily into the house, I picked up my 
rifle and sHpped back again. One of the deer was 
standing motionless, broadside to me; it was a 
long shot, two hundred and fifty yards, but I had 
a rest against a pillar of the verandah. I held 
true, and as the smoke cleared away the deer lay 
struggHng on the sands. 

As the whitetail is the most common and widely 
distributed of American game, so the Columbian 
blacktail has the most sharply limited geographi- 
cal range; for it is confined to the northwest 
coast, where it is by far the most abundant deer. 
In antlers it is indistinguishable from the common 
blacktail of the Rockies and the great plains, and 
it has the regular blacktail gait, a succession of 
stiff -legged bounds on all four feet at once; but 
its tail is more like a whitetail's in shape, though 
black above. As regards methods of hunting, and 



64 The Wilderness Hunter 

the amount of sport yielded, it stands midway- 
bet ween its two brethren. It lives in a land of 
magnificent timber, where the trees tower far into 
the sky, the giants of their kind; and there are 
few more attractive sports than still-hunting on 
the mountains, among these forests of marvellous 
beauty and grandeur. There are many lakes 
among the mountains where it dwells, and as it 
cares more for water than the ordinary blacktail, 
it is comparatively easy for hounds to drive it into 
some pond where it can be killed at leisure. It is 
thus often killed by hounding. 

The only one I ever killed was a fine young buck. 
We had camped near a little pond, and as evening 
fell I strolled off towards it and sat down. Just 
after sunset the buck came out of the woods. For 
some moments he hesitated and then walked for- 
ward and stood by the edge of the water, about 
sixty yards from me. We were out of meat, so 
I held right behind his shoulder, and though he 
went off, his bounds were short and weak, and he 
fell before he reached the wood. 



CHAPTER IV 

ON THE CATTLE RANGES; THE PRONGHORN 

ANTELOPE 

EARLY one June, just after the close of 
the regular spring round-up, a couple of 
wagons, with a score of riders between 
them, were sent to work some hitherto untouched 
country, between the Little Missouri and the Yel- 
lowstone. I was to go as the representative of 
our own and of one or two neighboring brands; 
but as the round-up had halted near my ranch 
I determined to spend a day there and then to 
join the wagons; — the appointed meeting-place 
being a cluster of red scoria buttes, some forty 
miles distant, where there was a spring of good 
water. 

Most of my day at the ranch was spent in slum- 
ber; for I had been several weeks on the round- 
up, where nobody ever gets quite enough sleep. 
This is the only drawback to the work ; otherwise 
it is pleasant and exciting, with just that slight 
touch of danger necessary to give it zest, and with- 
out the wearing fatigue of such labor as lumber- 
ing or mining. But there is never enough sleep, 
at least on the spring and midsummer round-ups. 

65 



66 The Wilderness Hunter 

The men are in the saddle from dawn until dusk 
at the time when the days are longest on these 
great northern plains; and in addition there is 
the regular night-guarding, and now and then a 
furious storm or a stampede, when for twenty- 
four hours at a stretch the riders only dismount 
to change horses or snatch a mouthful of food. 

I started in the bright sunrise, riding one horse 
and driving loose before me eight others, one car- 
rying my bedding. They travelled strung out in 
single file. I kept them trotting and loping, for 
loose horses are easiest to handle when driven at 
some speed, and, moreover, the way was long. 
My rifle was slung under my thigh ; the lariat was 
looped on the saddle-horn. 

At first our trail led through winding coulies 
and sharp, grassy defiles ; the air was wonderfully 
clear, the flowers were in bloom, the breath of the 
wind in my face was odorous and sweet. The pat- 
ter and beat of the unshod hoofs, rising in half- 
rhythmic measure, frightened the scudding deer; 
but the yellow-breasted meadow larks, perched on 
the budding tops of the bushes, sang their rich, 
full songs without heeding us as we went by. 

When the sun was well on high and the heat 
of the day had begun, we came to a dreary and 
barren plain, broken by rows of low, clay buttes. 
The ground in places was whitened by alkali; 
elsewhere it was dull gray. Here there grew 



On the Cattle Ranges 67 

nothing save sparse tufts of coarse grass and cac- 
tus and sprawling sage-brush. In the hot air all 
things seen afar danced and wavered. As I rode 
and gazed at the shimmering haze, the vast deso- 
lation of the landscape bore on me; it seemed as 
if the unseen and unknown powers of the wastes 
•were moving by and marshalling their silent 
forces. No man save the wilderness dweller 
knows the strong melancholy fascination of these 
long rides through lonely lands. 

At noon, that the horses might graze and drink 
I halted where some box-alders grew by a pool in 
the bed of a half -dry creek, and shifted my saddle 
to a fresh beast. When we started again we came 
out on the rolling prairie, where the green sea of 
wind-rippled grass stretched limitless as far as 
the eye could reach. Little striped gophers scut- 
tled away, or stood perfectly straight at the 
mouths of their burrows, looking like picket-pins. 
Curlews clamored mournfully as they circled over- 
head. Prairie-fowl swept off, clucking and call- 
ing, or strutted about with their sharp tails erect. 
Antelope were very plentiful, running like race- 
horses across the level, or uttering their queer, 
barking grunt as they stood at gaze, the white 
hairs on their rumps all on end, their neck-bands 
of broken brown and white vivid in the sunlight. 
They were found singly or in small straggling par- 
ties ; the master bucks had not yet begun to drive 



68 The Wilderness Hunter 

out the younger and weaker ones as later in the 
season, when each would gather into a herd as 
many does as his jealous strength could guard 
from rivals. The nursing does whose kids had 
come early were often found with the bands ; the 
others kept apart. The kids were very conspicu- 
ous figures on the prairies, across which they 
scudded like jack-rabbits, showing nearly as much 
speed and alertness as their parents; only the 
very young sought safety by lying flat to escape 
notice. 

The horses cantered and trotted steadily over 
the mat of buffalo grass, steering for the group of 
low scoria mounds which was my goal. In mid- 
afternoon I reached it. The two wagons were 
drawn up near the spring; under them lay the 
night- wranglers, asleep; nearby, the teamster- 
cooks were busy about the evening meal. A 
little way off, the two day -wranglers were watch- 
ing the horse-herd ; into which I speedily turned 
my own animals. The riders had already driven 
in the bunches of cattle, and were engaged in 
branding the calves, and turning loose the animals 
that were not needed, while the remainder were 
kept, forming the nucleus of the herd which was 
to accompany the wagon. 

As soon as the work was over the men rode to 
the wagons : sinewy fellows, with tattered, broad- 
brimmed hats and clanking spurs, some wearing 



On the Cattle Ranges 69 

leather shaps or leggings, others having their 
trousers tucked into their high-heeled top-boots, 
all with their flannel shirts and loose neckerchiefs 
dusty and sweaty. A few were indulging in 
rough, good-natured horse-play, to an accompani- 
ment of yelling mirth ; most were grave and taci- 
turn, greeting me with a silent nod or a "How! 
friend." A very talkative man, unless the ac- 
knowledged wit of the party, according to the 
somewhat florid frontier notion of wit, is always 
looked on with disfavor in a cow-camp. After 
supper, eaten in silent haste, we gathered round 
the embers of the small flres, and the conversa- 
tion glanced fitfully over the threadbare subjects 
common to all such camps: the antics of some 
particularly vicious bucking bronco, how the 
different brands of cattle were showing up, the 
smallness of the calf drop, the respective merits 
of rawhide lariats and grass ropes, and bits of 
rather startling and violent news concerning the 
fates of certain neighbors. Then one by one we 
began to turn in under our blankets. 

Our wagon was to furnish the night-guards for 
the cattle; and each of us had his gentlest horse 
tied ready to hand. The night-guards went on 
duty two at a time for two-hour watches. By 
good luck, my watch came last. My comrade was 
a happy-go-lucky young Texan, who for some 
inscrutable reason was known as " Latigo Strap" ; 



70 The Wilderness Hunter 

he had just come from the south with a big drove 
of trail cattle. 

A few minutes before two, one of the guards who 
had gone on duty at midnight rode into camp 
and awakened us by shaking our shoulders. Fum- 
bling in the dark, I speedily saddled my horse; 
Latigo had left his saddled, and he started ahead 
of me. One of the annoyances of night-guarding, 
at least in thick weather, is the occasional diffi- 
culty of finding the herd after leaving camp, or in 
returning to camp after the watch is over; there 
are few things more exasperating than to be help- 
lessly wandering about in the dark under such 
circumstances. However, on this occasion there 
was no such trouble; for it was a brilliant star- 
light night and the herd had been bedded down 
by a sugar-loaf butte which made a good land- 
mark. As we reached the spot we could make out 
the loom of the cattle lying close together on the 
level plain; and then the dim figure of a horse- 
man rose vaguely from the darkness and moved by 
in silence ; it was the other of the two midnight 
guards on his way back to his broken slumber. 

At once we began to ride slowly round the 
cattle in opposite directions. We were silent, for 
the night was clear, and the herd quiet; in wild 
weather, when the cattle are restless, the cow- 
boys never cease calling and singing as they circle 
them, for the sounds seem to quiet the beasts. 



On the Cattle Ranges 71 

For over an hour we steadily paced the endless 
round, saying nothing, with our greatcoats but- 
toned, for the air is chill towards morning on 
the nofthem plains, even in summer. Then faint 
streaks of gray appeared in the east, Latigo 
Strap began to call merrily to the cattle. A coy- 
ote came sneaking over the butte nearby and 
halted to yell and wail ; afterwards he crossed the 
coulie and from the hillside opposite again shrieked 
in dismal crescendo. The dawn brightened rap- 
idly ; the little skylarks of the plains began to sing, 
soaring far overhead, while it was still much too 
dark to see them. Their song is not powerful, 
but it is so clear and fresh and long-continued 
that it always appeals to one very strongly ; es- 
pecially because it is most often heard in the 
rose-tinted air of the glorious mornings, while 
the listener sits in the saddle, looking across the 
endless sweep of the prairies. 

As it grew lighter the cattle became restless, 
rising and stretching themselves, while we con- 
tinued to ride round them. 

" Then the bronc' began to pitch 
And I began to ride; 
He bucked me off a cut bank, 
Hell! I nearly died!" 

sang Latigo from the other side of the herd. A 
yell from the wagons told that the cook was sum- 
moning the sleeping cow-punchers to breakfast; 



72 The Wilderness Hunter 

we were soon able to distinguish their figures as 
they rolled out of their bedding, wrapped and 
corded it into bundles, and huddled sullenly round 
the little fires. The horse-wranglers were driving 
in the saddle bands. All the cattle got on their 
feet and started feeding. In a few minutes the 
hasty breakfast at the wagons had evidently been 
despatched, for we could see the men forming rope 
corrals into which the ponies were driven; then 
each man saddled, bridled, and mounted his 
horse, two or three of the half-broken beasts 
bucking, rearing, and plunging frantically in the 
vain effort to unseat their riders. 

The two men who were first in the saddle re- 
lieved Latigo and myself, and we immediately 
galloped to camp, shifted our saddles to fresh ani- 
mals, gulped down a cup or two of hot coffee, and 
some pork, beans, and bread, and rode to the spot 
where the others were gathered, lolling loosely in 
their saddles and waiting for the round-up boss 
to assign them their tasks. We were the last, and 
as soon as we arrived the boss divided all into two 
parties for the morning work, or "circle riding," 
whereby the cattle were to be gathered for the 
round-up proper. Then, as the others started, he 
turned to me and remarked: "We've got enough 
hands to drive this open country without you; 
but we're out of meat, and I don't want to kill a 
beef for such a small outfit ; can't you shoot some 



The Pronghorn Antelope "jz 

antelope this morning? We'll pitch camp by the 
big, blasted cottonwood at the foot of the ash 
coulies over yonder, below the breaks of Dry 
Creek." 

Of course I gladly assented, and was speedily 
riding alone across the grassy slopes. There was 
no lack of the game I was after, for from every 
rise of ground I could see antelope scattered 
across the prairie — singly, in couples, or in bands. 
But their very numbers, joined to the lack of 
cover on such an open, flattish country, proved a 
bar to success; while I was stalking one band 
another was sure to see me and begin running, 
whereat the first would likewise start; I missed 
one or two very long shots, and noon found me 
still without game. 

However, I was then lucky enough to see a 
band of a dozen feeding to windward of a small 
butte, and by galloping in a long circle I got 
within a quarter of a mile of them before having 
to dismount. The stalk itself was almost too easy, 
for I simply walked to the butte, climbed carefully 
up a slope where the soil was firm and peered over 
the top, to see the herd — a little one — a hundred 
yards off. They saw me at once and ran, but I 
held well ahead of a fine young prongbuck, and 
rolled him over like a rabbit, with both shoulders 
broken. In a few minutes I was riding onwards 
once more, with the buck lashed behind my saddle. 



74 The Wilderness Hunter 

The next one I got, a couple of hours later, 
offered a much more puzzling stalk. He was a 
big fellow, in company with four does or small 
bucks. All five were lying in the middle of a 
slight basin, at the head of a gentle valley. At 
first sight it seemed impossible to get near them, 
for there was not so much cover as a sage-brush, 
and the smooth, shallow basin in which they lay 
was over a thousand yards across, while they were 
looking directly down the valley. However, it is 
curious how hard it is to tell, even from nearby, 
whether a stalk can or cannot be made ; the diffi- 
culty being to estimate the exact amount of shel- 
ter yielded by little inequaHties of ground. In 
this instance a small, shallow watercourse, entirely 
dry, ran along the valley, and after much study 
I decided to try to crawl up it, although the big, 
bulging, telescopic eyes of the prongbuck — which 
have much keener sight than deer or any other 
game — would in such case be pointed directly my 
way. 

Having made up my mind, I backed cautiously 
down from the coign of vantage whence I had first 
seen the game, and ran about a mile to the mouth 
of a washout which formed the continuation of 
the watercourse in question. Protected by the 
high clay banks of this washout, I was able to 
walk upright until within half a mile of the prong- 
bucks ; then my progress became very tedious and 



The Pronghorn Antelope 75 

toilsome, as I had to work my way up the water- 
course flat on my stomach, dragging the rifle be- 
side me. At last I reached a spot beyond which 
not even a snake could crawl unnoticed. In front 
was a low bank, a couple of feet high, crested with 
tufts of coarse grass. Raising my head very cau- 
tiously, I peered through these and saw the prong- 
horn about a hundred and flfty yards distant. 
At the same time I found that I had crawled to 
the edge of a village of prairie-dogs, which had 
already made me aware of their presence by their 
shrill yelping. They saw me at once, and all 
those away from their homes scuttled towards 
them and dived down the burrows, or sat on the 
mounds at the entrances, scolding convulsively 
and jerking their fat little bodies and short tails. 
This commotion at once attracted the attention of 
the antelope. They rose forthwith, and imme- 
diately caught a glimpse of the black muzzle of 
the rifle which I was gently pushing through the 
grass tufts. The fatal curiosity which so often in 
this species offsets wariness and sharp sight, 
proved my friend; evidently the antelope could 
not quite make me out and wished to know what 
I was. They moved nervously to and fro, strik- 
ing the earth with their fore hoofs and now and 
then uttering a sudden bleat. At last the big 
buck stood still, broadside to me, and I fired. He 
went off with the others, but lagged behind as 



7^ The Wilderness Hunter 

they passed over the hill crest, and when I reached 
it I saw him standing, not very far off, with his 
head down. Then he walked backwards a few 
steps, fell over on his side, and died. 

As he was a big buck, I slung him across the 
saddle and started for camp afoot, leading the 
horse. However, my hunt was not over, for while 
still a mile from the wagons, going down a coulie 
of Dry Creek, a yearling prongbuck walked over 
the divide to my right and stood still until I 
sent a bullet into its chest; so that I made my 
appearance in camp with three antelope. 

I spoke above of the sweet singing of the west- 
ern meadow lark and plains skylark; neither of 
them kin to the true skylark, by the way, one 
being a cousin of the grakles and hangbirds, and 
the other a kind of pipit. To me both of these 
birds are among the most attractive singers to 
which I have ever listened; but with all bird 
music much must be allowed for the surroundings 
and much for the mood, and the keenness of sense, 
of the listener. The lilt of the little plains sky- 
lark is neither very powerful nor very melodious ; 
but it is sweet, pure, long-sustained, with a ring 
of courage befitting a song uttered in highest 
air. 

The meadow lark is a singer of a higher order, 
deserving to rank with the best. Its song has 
length, variety, power, and rich melody; and 



The Pronghorn Antelope "]"] 

there is in it sometimes a cadence of wild sadness, 
inexpressibly touching. Yet I cannot say that 
either song would appeal to others as it appeals 
to me; for to me it comes forever laden with a 
hundred memories and associations; with the 
sight of dim hills reddening in the dawn, with the 
breath of cool morning winds blowing across lonely 
plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlit 
prairie, with the motion of fiery horses, with all 
the strong thrill of eager and buoyant life. I 
doubt if any man can judge dispassionately the 
bird songs of his own country; he cannot dis- 
associate them from the sights and sounds of the 
land that is so dear to him. 

This is not a feeling to regret, but it must be 
taken into account in accepting any estimate of 
bird music — even in considering the reputation of 
the European skylark and nightingale. To both 
of these birds I have often listened in their own 
homes ; always with pleasure and admiration, but 
always with a growing belief that, relatively to 
some other birds, they were ranked too high. 
They are pre-eminently birds with literary asso- 
ciations ; most people take their opinions of them 
at second hand, from the poets. 

No one can help liking the lark; it is such a 
brave, honest, cheery bird, and, moreover, its 
song is uttered in the air, and is very long sus- 
tained. But it is by no means a musician of the 



78 The Wilderness Hunter 

first rank. The nightingale is a performer of a 
very different and far higher order ; yet, though it 
is indeed a notable and admirable singer, it is an 
exaggeration to call it unequalled. In melody, 
and, above all, in that finer, higher melody where 
the chords vibrate with the touch of eternal sor- 
row, it cannot rank with such singers as the wood 
thrush and hermit thrush. The serene, ethereal, 
beauty of the hermit's song, rising and falling 
through the still evening, under the archways of 
hoary mountain forests that have endured from 
time everlasting ; the golden, leisurely chiming of 
the wood thrush, sounding on June afternoons, 
stanza by stanza, through sun-flecked groves of 
tall hickories, oaks, and chestnuts — with these 
there is nothing in the nightingale's song to com- 
pare. But in volume and continuity, in tuneful, 
voluble, rapid outpouring and ardor, above all in 
skilful and intricate variation of theme, its song 
far surpasses that of either of the thrushes. In 
all these respects, it is more just to compare it with 
the mocking-bird's, which, as a rule, likewise falls 
short precisely on those points where the songs of 
the two thrushes excel. 

The mocking-bird is a singer that has suffered 
much in reputation from its powers of mimicry. 
On ordinary occasions, and especially in the day- 
time, it insists on playing the harlequin. But 
when free in its own favorite haunts at night in 



The Pronghorn Antelope 79 

the love season, it has a song, or rather songs, 
which are not only purely original, but are also 
more beautiful than any other bird music what- 
soever. Once I listened to a mocking-bird sing- 
ing the livelong spring night, under the full moon, 
in a magnolia tree ; and I do not think I shall ever 
forget its song. 

It was on the plantation of Major Campbell 
Brown, near Nashville, in the beautiful, fertile 
mid-Tennessee country. The mocking-birds were 
prime favorites on the place ; and were given full 
scope for the development, not only of their bold 
friendliness towards mankind, but also of that 
marked individuality and originality of character 
in which they so far surpass every other bird as to 
become the most interesting of all feathered folk. 
One of the mockers, which lived in the hedge bor- 
dering the garden, was constantly engaged in an 
amusing feud with an honest old setter dog, the 
point of attack being the tip of the dog's tail. 
For some reason the bird seemed to regard any 
hoisting of the setter's tail as a challenge and in- 
sult. It would flutter near the dog as he walked; 
the old setter would become interested in some- 
thing and raise his tail. The bird would promptly 
fly at it and peck the tip ; whereupon down went 
the tail, until in a couple of minutes the old fellow 
would forget himself, and the scene would be 
repeated. The dog usually bore the assaults with 



8o The Wilderness Hunter 

comic resignation ; and the mocker easily avoided 
any momentary outburst of clumsy resentment. 

On the evening in question the moon was full. 
My host kindly assigned me a room of which the 
windows opened on a great magnolia tree, where, 
I was told, a mocking-bird sang every night and 
all night long. I went to my room about ten. 
The moonlight was shining in through the open 
window, and the mocking-bird was already in the 
magnolia. The great tree was bathed in a flood 
of shining silver ; I could see each twig and mark 
every action of the singer, who was pouring forth 
such a rapture of ringing melody as I have never 
listened to before or since. Sometimes he would 
perch motionless for many minutes, his body quiv- 
ering and thrilling with the outpour of music. 
Then he would drop softly from twig to twig, 
until the lowest limb was reached, when he would 
rise, fluttering and leaping through the branches, 
his song never ceasing for an instant, until he 
reached the summit of the tree and launched into 
the warm, scent -laden air, floating in spirals, with 
outspread wings, until, as if spent, he sank gently 
back into the tree and down through the branches, 
while his song rose into an ecstasy of ardor and 
passion. His voice rang like a clarionet, in rich, 
full tones, and his execution covered the widest 
possible compass; theme followed theme, a tor- 
rent of music, a swelling tide of harmony, in which 



The Pronghorn Antelope 8i 

scarcely any two bars were alike. I stayed till 
midnight listening to him ; he was singing when I 
went to sleep; he was still singing when I woke 
a couple of hours later ; he sang through the live- 
long night. 

There are many singers beside the meadow lark 
and little skylark in the plains country — that 
brown and desolate land, once the home of the 
thronging buffalo, still haunted by the bands of 
the prongbuck, and roamed over in ever-increas- 
ing numbers by the branded herds of the ranch- 
man. In the brush of the river bottoms there 
are the thrasher and song sparrow ; on the grassy 
uplands the lark finch, vesper sparrow, and lark 
bunting ; and in the rough canyons the rock wren, 
with its ringing melody. 

Yet in certain moods a man cares less for even 
the loveliest bird songs than for the wilder, 
harsher, stronger sounds of the wilderness; the 
guttural booming and clucking of the prairie-fowl 
and the great sage-fowl in spring ; the honking of 
gangs of wild geese, as they fly in rapid wedges; 
the bark of an eagle, wheeling in the shadow of 
storm-scarred cliffs; or the far-off clanging of 
many sandhill cranes, soaring high overhead in 
circles which cross and recross at an incredible 
altitude. Wilder yet, and stranger, are the cries 
of the great four-footed beasts; the rhythmic 
pealing of a bull-elk's challenge; and that most 

6 



82 The Wilderness Hunter 

sinister and mournful sound, ever fraught with 
foreboding of murder and rapine, the long-drawn 
baying of the gray wolf. 

Indeed, save to the trained ear, most mere 
bird songs are not very noticeable. The ordinary 
wilderness dweller, whether hunter or cowboy, 
scarcely heeds them ; and, in fact, knows but little 
of the smaller birds. If a bird has some conspicu- 
ous peculiarity of look or habit he will notice its 
existence ; but not otherwise. He knows a good 
deal about magpies, whisky-jacks, or water- 
ousels; but nothing whatever concerning the 
thrushes, finches, and warblers. 

It is the same with mammals. The prairie-dogs 
he cannot help noticing. With the big pack-rats 
also he is well acquainted; for they are hand- 
some, with soft gray fur, large eyes, and bushy 
tails; and, moreover, no one can avoid remark- 
ing their extraordinary habit of carrying to their 
burrows everything bright, useless, and portable, 
from an empty cartridge case to a skinning-knife. 
But he knows nothing of mice, shrews, pocket- 
gophers, or weasels; and but little even of some 
larger mammals with very marked characteris- 
tics. Thus I have met but one or two plainsmen 
who knew anything of the curious plains ferret, 
that rather rare weasel-like animal, which plays 
the same part on the plains that the mink does 
by the edges of all our streams and brooks, and 



The Pronghorn Antelope 83 

the tree-loving sable in the cold northern forests. 
The ferret makes its home in burrows, and by 
preference goes abroad at dawn and dusk, but 
sometimes even at midday. It is as blood- 
thirsty as the mink itself, and its life is one long 
ramble for prey — gophers, prairie-dogs, sage-rab- 
bits, jack-rabbits, snakes, and every kind of 
ground bird furnishing its food. I have known 
one to fairly depopulate a prairie-dog town, it 
being the arch foe of these little rodents, because 
of its insatiable blood lust and its capacity to fol- 
low them into their burrows. Once I found the 
bloody body and broken eggs of a poor prairie- 
hen which a ferret had evidently surprised on her 
nest. Another time one of my men was eye-wit- 
ness to a more remarkable instance of the little 
animal's bloodthirsty ferocity. He was riding 
the range, and, being attracted by a slight com- 
motion in a clump of grass, he turned his horse 
thither to look, and to his astonishment found an 
antelope fawn at the last gasp, but still feebly 
struggling in the grasp of a ferret, which had 
throttled it and was sucking its blood with hideous 
greediness. He avenged the murdered innocent 
by a dexterous blow with the knotted end of his 
lariat. 

That mighty bird of rapine, the war-eagle, 
which on the great plains and among the Rockies 
supplants the bald-headed eagle of better-watered 



§4 The Wilderness Hunter 

regions, is another dangerous foe of the young 
antelope. It is even said that under exceptional 
circumstances eagles will assail a full-grown prong- 
horn; and a neighboring ranchman informs me 
that he was once an eye-witness to such an attack. 
It was a bleak day in the late winter, and he was 
riding home across a wide, dreary plateau, when 
he saw two eagles worrying and pouncing on a 
prongbuck— seemingly a yearling. It made a 
gallant fight. The eagles hovered over it with 
spread wings, now and then swooping down, their 
talons out-thrust, to strike at the head, or to try 
to settle on the loins. The antelope reared and 
struck with hoofs and horns like a goat; but its 
strength was failing rapidly, and doubtless it 
would have succumbed in the end had not the 
approach of the ranchman driven off the marau- 
ders. 

I have likewise heard stories of eagles attack- 
ing badgers, foxes, bob-cats, and coyotes; but I 
am inclined to think all such cases exceptional. 
I have never myself seen an eagle assail anything 
bigger than a fawn, lamb, kid, or jack-rabbit. It 
also swoops at geese, sage-fowl, and prairie-fowl. 
On one occasion, while riding over the range, I 
witnessed an attack on a jack-rabbit. The eagle 
was soaring overhead, and espied the jack while 
the latter was crouched motionless. Instantly the 
great bird rushed down through the humming air, 



The Pronghorn Antelope 85 

with closed wings ; checked itself when some forty 
yards above the jack, hovered for a moment, and 
again fell like a bolt. Away went long-ears, run- 
ning as only a frightened jack can ; and after him 
the eagle, not with the arrowy rush of its descent 
from high air, but with eager, hurried flapping. 
In a short time it had nearly overtaken the fugi- 
tive, when the latter dodged sharply to one side, 
and the eagle overshot it precisely as a grey- 
hound would have done, stopping itself by a pow- 
erful, setting motion of the great pinions. Twice 
this manoeuvre was repeated; then the eagle 
made a quick rush, caught, and overthrew the 
quarry before it could turn, and in another mo- 
ment was sitting triumphant on the quivering 
body, the crooked talons driven deep into the 
soft, furry sides. 

Once, while hunting mountain sheep in the Bad 
Lands, I killed an eagle on the wing with the rifle. 
I was walking beneath a cliff of gray clay, when 
the eagle sailed into view over the crest. As soon 
as he saw me he threw his wings aback, and for a 
moment before wheeling poised motionless, offer- 
ing a nearly stationary target ; so that my bullet 
grazed his shoulder, and down he came through 
the air, tumbling over and over. As he struck the 
ground he threw himself on his back, and fought 
against his death with the undaunted courage 
proper to his brave and cruel nature. 



86 The Wilderness Hunter 

Indians greatly prize the feathers of this eagle. 
With them they make their striking and beautiful 
war bonnets, and bedeck the manes and tails of 
their spirited war ponies. Every year the Gros- 
ventres and Mandans from the Big Missouri come 
to the neighborhood of my ranch to hunt. Though 
not good marksmen, they kill many whitetail deer, 
driving the bottoms for them in bands, on horse- 
back; and they catch many eagles. Sometimes 
they take these alive by exposing a bait near 
which a hole is dug, where one of them lies hidden 
for days, with Indian patience, until an eagle 
lights on the bait and is noosed. 

Even eagles are far less dangerous enemies to 
antelope than are wolves and coyotes. These 
beasts are always prowling round the bands to 
snap up the sick or unwary; and in spring they 
revel in carnage of the kids and fawns. They are 
not swift enough to overtake the grown animals 
by sheer speed ; but they are superior in endurance, 
and, especially in winter, often run them down in 
fair chase. A prongbuck is a plucky little beast, 
and when cornered it often makes a gallant, 
though not a very effectual, fight. 



CHAPTER V 

HUNTING THE PRONGBUCK; FROST, FIRE, 
AND THIRST 

AS with all other American game, man is a 
worse foe to the pronghorns than all 
their brute enemies combined. They 
hold their own much better than the bigger game ; 
on the whole even better than the blacktail ; but 
their numbers have been wofully thinned, and in 
many places they have been completely exter- 
minated. The most exciting method of chasing 
them is on horseback with greyhounds ; but they 
are usually killed with the rifle. Owing to the 
open nature of the ground they frequent, the shots 
must generally be taken at long range; hence 
this kind of hunting is pre-eminently that need- 
ing judgment of distance and skill in the use of 
the long-range rifle at stationary objects. On the 
other hand the antelope are easily seen, making 
no effort to escape observation, as deer do, and 
are so curious that in very wild districts to this 
day they can sometimes be tolled within rifle- 
shot by the judicious waving of a red flag. In 
consequence, a good many very long, but tempt- 
ing, shots can be obtained. More cartridges are 

87 



88 The Wilderness Hunter 

used, relatively to the amount of game killed, on 
antelope than in any other hunting. 

Often I have killed prongbucks while riding 
between the outlying line camps, which are usu- 
ally stationed a dozen miles or so back from the 
river, where the Bad Lands melt into the prairie. 
In continually trying long shots, of course one 
occasionally makes a remarkable hit. Once, I re- 
member, while riding down a broad, shallow cou- 
lie with two of my cow-hands, — Sea well and Dow, 
both keen hunters and among the staunchest 
friends I have ever had, — rousing a band of ante- 
lope which stood irresolute at about a hundred 
yards until I killed one. Then they dashed off, 
and I missed one shot, but with my next, to my 
own utter astonishment, killed the last of the 
band, a big buck, just as he topped a rise four 
hundred yards away. To offset such shots I have 
occasionally made an unaccountable miss. Once 
I was hunting with the same two men, on a rainy 
day, when we came on a bunch of antelope some 
seventy yards of?, lying down on the side of a 
coulie, to escape the storm. They huddled to- 
gether a moment to gaze, and, with stiffened 
fingers I took a shot, my yellow oilskin slicker 
flapping around me in the wind and rain. Down 
went one buck, and away went the others. One 
of my men walked up to the fallen beast, bent 
over it, and then asked: "Where did you aim?" 



Hunting the Prongbuck 89 

Not reassured by the question, I answered doubt- 
fully: "Behind the shoulder." Whereat he re- 
marked drily: "Well, you hit it in the eye!" 
I never did know whether I killed the antelope I 
aimed at or another. Yet that same day I killed 
three more bucks at decidedly long shots ; at the 
time we lacked meat at the ranch, and were out 
to make a good killing. 

Besides their brute and human foes, the prong- 
horn must also fear the elements, and especially 
the snows of winter. On the northern plains the 
cold weather is of polar severity, and turns the 
green, grassy prairies of midsummer into iron- 
bound wastes. The blizzards whirl and sweep 
across them with a shrieking fury which few liv- 
ing things may face. The snow is like fine ice- 
dust, and the white waves glide across the grass 
with a stealthy, crawling motion which has in it 
something sinister and cruel. Accordingly, as the 
bright fall weather passes, and the dreary winter 
draws nigh, when the days shorten, and the 
nights seem interminable, and gray storms lower 
above the gray horizon, the antelope gather in 
bands and seek sheltered places, where they may 
abide through the winter-time of famine and cold 
and deep snow. Some of these bands travel for 
many hundred miles, going and returning over 
the same routes, swimming rivers, crossing prai- 
ries, and threading their way through steep defiles. 



90 The Wilderness Hunter 

Such bands make their winter home in the Black 
Hills, or similar mountainous regions, where the 
shelter and feed are good, and where, in conse- 
quence, antelope have wintered in countless 
thousands for untold generations. Other bands 
do not travel for any very great distance, but 
seek some sheltered grassy table-land in the 
Bad Lands, or some well-shielded valley, where 
their instinct and experience teach them that the 
snow does not lie deep in winter. Once having 
chosen such a place they stand much persecution 
before leaving it. 

One December, an old hunter whom I knew 
told me that such a band was wintering a few 
miles from a camp where two line-riders of the 
W Bar brand were stationed ; and I made up my 
mind to ride thither and kill a couple. The line 
camp was twenty miles from my ranch; the 
shack in which the old hunter lived was midway 
between, and I had to stop there to find out the 
exact lay of the land. 

At dawn, before our early breakfast, I saddled 
a tough, shaggy sorrel horse; hastening indoors 
as soon as the job was over to warm my numbed 
fingers. After breakfast I started, muffled in my 
wolfskin coat, with beaver-fur cap, gloves, and 
shaps, and great felt overshoes. The windless 
air was bitter cold, the thermometer showing well 
below zero. Snow lay on the ground, leaving 



Hunting the Prongbuck 91 

bare patches here and there, but drifted deep in 
the hollows. Under the steel-blue heavens the 
atmosphere had a peculiar glint, as if filled with 
myriads of tiny crystals. As I crossed the frozen 
river, immediately in front of the ranch-house, 
the strangely carved tops of the bluffs were red- 
dening palely in the winter sunrise. Prairie-fowl 
were perched in the bare cottonwoods along the 
river brink, showing large in the leafless branches ; 
they called and clucked to one another. 

Where the ground was level and the snow not 
too deep I loped, and before noon I reached the 
sheltered coulie where, with long poles and bark, 
the hunter had built his tepee — wigwam, as eastern 
woodsmen would have called it. It stood in a 
loose grove of elms and box-alders; from the 
branches of the nearest trees hung saddles of 
frozen venison. The smoke rising from the fun- 
nel-shaped top of the tepee showed that there was 
more fire than usual within; it is easy to keep a 
good tepee warm, though it is so smoky that no 
one therein can stand upright. As I drew rein the 
skin door was pushed aside, and the hard old face 
and dried, battered body of the hunter appeared. 
He greeted me with a surly nod, and a brief re- 
quest to "light and hev somethin' to eat" — the 
invariable proffer of hospitality on the plains. 
He wore a greasy buckskin shirt or tunic, and 
an odd cap of badger-skin, from beneath which 



92 The Wilderness Hunter 

strayed his tangled hair; age, rheumatism, and 
the many accidents and incredible fatigue, hard- 
ship, and exposure of his past life had crippled 
him, yet he still possessed great power of endur- 
ance, and in his seamed, weather-scarred face his 
eyes burned fierce and piercing as a hawk's. Ever 
since early manhood he had wandered over the 
plains, hunting and trapping ; he had waged sav- 
age private war against half the Indian tribes of 
the north; and he had wedded wives in each of 
the tribes of the other half. A few years before 
this time the great buffalo herds had vanished, 
and the once swarming beaver had shared the 
same fate; the innumerable horses and horned 
stock of the cattlemen, and the daring rough 
riders of the ranches, had supplanted alike the 
game and the red and white wanderers who had 
followed it with such fierce rivalry. When the 
change took place the old fellow, with failing 
bodily powers, found his life-work over. He had 
little taste for the career of the desperado, horse- 
thief, highwayman, and man-killer, which not a 
few of the old buffalo-hunters adopted when their 
legitimate occupation was gone; he scorned still 
more the life of vicious and idle semi-criminality 
led by others of his former companions who were 
of weaker mould. Yet he could not do regular 
work. His existence had been one of excite- 
ment, adventure, and restless roaming, when it 



Hunting the Prongbuck 93 

was not passed in lazy ease ; his times of toil and 
peril varied by fits of brutal revelry. He had no 
kin, no ties of any kind. He would accept no 
help, for his wants were very few, and he was 
utterly self-reliant. He got meat, clothing, and 
bedding from the antelope and deer he killed ; the 
spare hides and venison he bartered for what little 
else he needed. So he built him his tepee in one 
of the most secluded parts of the Bad Lands, 
where he led the life of a solitary hunter, awaiting 
in grim loneliness the death which he knew to be 
near at hand. 

I unsaddled and picketed my horse, and fol- 
lowed the old hunter into his smoky tepee; sat 
down on the pile of worn buffalo-robes which 
formed his bedding, and waited in silence while 
he fried some deer meat and boiled some coffee — 
he was out of flour. As I ate, he gradually un- 
bent and talked quite freely, and before I left he 
told me exactly where to find the band, which he 
assured me was located for the winter, and would 
not leave unless much harried. 

After a couple of hours' rest I again started, 
and pushed out to the end of the Bad Lands. 
Here, as there had been no wind, I knew I should 
find in the snow the tracks of one of the riders 
from the line camp, whose beat lay along the edge 
of the prairie for some eight miles, until it met 
the beat of a rider from the line camp next above. 



94 The Wilderness Hunter 

As nightfall came on it grew even colder; long 
icicles hung from the lips of my horse ; and I shiv- 
ered slightly in my fur coat. I had reckoned the 
distance ill, and it was dusk when I struck the 
trail ; but my horse at once turned along it of his 
own accord and began to lope. Half an hour 
later I saw through the dark what looked like a 
spark on the side of a hill. Toward this my horse 
turned; and in another moment a whinnying 
from in front showed I was near the camp. The 
light was shining through a small window, the 
camp itself being a dugout with a log roof and 
front — a kind of frontier building, always warm 
in winter. After turning my horse into the rough 
log stable with the horses of the two cowboys, I 
joined the latter at supper inside the dugout; 
being received, of course, with hearty cordiality. 
After the intense cold outside the warmth within 
was almost oppressive, for the fire was roaring in 
the big stone fireplace. The bunks were broad; 
my two friends turned into one, and I was given 
the other, with plenty of bedding; so that my 
sleep was sound. 

We had breakfasted and saddled our horses and 
were off by dawn next morning. My companions, 
muffled in furs, started in opposite directions to 
ride their lonely beats, while I steered for my 
hunting-ground. It was a lowering and gloomy 
day; at sunrise pale, lurid sundogs hung in the 



Hunting the Prongbuck 95 

glimmering mist ; gusts of wind moaned through 
the ravines. 

At last I reached a row of bleak hills, and from 
a ridge looked cautiously down on the chain of 
plateaus, where I had been told I should see 
the antelope. Sure enough, there they were, to 
the number of several hundred, scattered over the 
level, snow-streaked surface of the nearest and 
largest plateau, greedily cropping the thick, short 
grass. Leaving my horse tied in a hollow, I speed- 
ily stalked up a coulie to within a hundred yards 
of the nearest band and killed a good buck. In- 
stantly all the antelope in sight ran together into 
a thick mass and raced away from me, until they 
went over the opposite edge of the plateau; but 
almost as soon as they did so they were stopped 
by deep drifts of powdered snow, and came back 
to the summit of the table-land. They then 
circled round the edge at a gallop, and finally 
broke madly by me, jostling one another in their 
frantic haste and crossed by a small ridge into the 
next plateau beyond; as they went by I shot a 
yearling. 

I now had all the venison I wished, and would 
shoot no more, but I was curious to see how the 
antelope would act, and so walked after them. 
They ran about half a mile, and then the whole 
herd, of several hundred individuals, wheeled into 
line fronting me, like so many cavalry, and stood 



96 The Wilderness Hunter 

motionless, the white and brown bands on their 
necks looking like the facings on a uniform. As 
I walked near they again broke and rushed to the 
end of the valley. Evidently they feared to leave 
the flats for the broken country beyond, where 
the rugged hills were riven by gorges, in some of 
which snow lay deep even thus early in the season. 
Accordingly, after galloping a couple of times 
round the valley, they once more broke by me, at 
short range, and tore back along the plateaus to 
that on which I had first found them. Their evi- 
dent and extreme reluctance to venture into the 
broken country round about made me readily un- 
derstand the tales I had heard of game butchers 
killing over a hundred individuals at a time out 
of a herd so situated. 

I walked back to my game, dressed it, and 
lashed the saddles and hams behind me on my 
horse ; I had chosen old Sorrel Joe for the trip be- 
cause he was strong, tough, and quiet. Then I 
started for the ranch, keeping to the prairie as 
long as I could, because there the going was 
easier; sometimes I rode, sometimes I ran on 
foot, leading Sorrel Joe. 

Late in the afternoon, as I rode over a roll in 
the prairie I saw ahead of me a sight very imusual 
at that season; a small emigrant train going 
westward. There were three white-topped prai- 
rie schooners, containing the household goods, 



Hunting the Prongbuck 97 

the tow-headed children, and the hard-faced, 
bony women; the tired horses were straining 
wearily in the traces; the bearded, moody men 
walked alongside. They had been belated by 
sickness, and the others of their company had 
gone ahead to take up claims along the Yellow- 
stone; now they themselves were pushing for- 
ward in order to reach the holdings of their 
friends before the first deep snows stopped all 
travel. They had no time to halt ; for there were 
still two or three miles to go that evening before 
they could find a sheltered resting-place, with 
fuel, grass, and water. A little while after pass- 
ing them I turned in the saddle and looked back. 
The lonely little train stood out sharply on the 
sky-line, the wagons looming black against the 
cold, red west as they toiled steadily onward 
across the snowy plain. 

Night soon fell ; but I cared little, for I was on 
ground I knew. The old horse threaded his way 
at a lope along the familiar game trails and cattle 
paths; in a couple of hours I caught the gleam 
from the fireHt windows of the ranch-house. No 
man who, for his good-fortune, has at times in his 
life endured toil and hardship, ever fails to ap- 
preciate the strong elemental pleasures of rest, 
after labor, food after hunger, warmth and shelter 
after bitter cold. 

So much for the winter hunting. But in the 



98 The Wilderness Hunter 

fall, when the grass is dry as tinder, the antelope 
hunter, like other plainsmen, must sometimes face 
fire instead of frost. Fire is one of the most 
dreaded enemies of the ranchmen on the cattle 
ranges ; and fighting a big prairie fire is a work of 
extraordinary labor, and sometimes of danger. 
The line of flame, especially when seen at night, 
undulating like a serpent, is very beautiful; 
though it lacks the terror and grandeur of the 
great forest fires. 

One October, Ferguson and I, with one of the 
cow-hands, and a friend from the East, took the 
wagon for an antelope hunt in the broken country 
between the Little Missouri and the Beaver. The 
cowboy drove the wagon to a small spring, near 
some buttes which are well distinguished by a 
number of fossil tree-stumps ; while the rest of us, 
who were mounted on good horses, made a circle 
after antelope. We found none, and rode on to 
camp, reaching it about the middle of the after- 
noon. We had noticed several columns of smoke 
in the southeast, showing that prairie fires were 
under way; but we thought that they were too 
far off to endanger our camp, and accordingly un- 
saddled our horses and sat down to a dinner of 
bread, beans, and coffee. Before we were through 
the smoke began to pour over a ridge a mile dis- 
tant in such quantities that we ran thither with 
our slickers, hoping to find some stretch of broken 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 99 

ground where the grass was sparse, and where 
we could fight the fire with effect. Our hopes 
were vain. Before we reached the ridge the fire 
came over its crest, and ran down in a long tongue 
between two scoria buttes. Here the grass was 
quite short and thin, and we did our best to beat 
out the flames ; but they gradually gained on us, 
and as they reached the thicker grass lower down 
the slope, they began to roar and dart forward in 
a way that bade us pay heed to our own safety. 
Finally they reached a winding line of brushwood 
in the bottom of the coulie ; and as this burst into 
a leaping blaze we saw it was high time to look to 
the safety of our camp, and ran back to it at top 
speed. Ferguson, who had been foremost in 
fighting the fire, was already scorched and black- 
ened. 

We were camped on the wagon trail which leads 
along the divide almost due south to Sentinel 
Butte. The line of fire was fanned by a southeast- 
erly breeze, and was therefore advancing diago- 
nally to the divide. If we could drive the wagon 
southward on the trail in time to get it past the 
fire before the latter reached the divide, we would 
be to windward of the flames, and therefore in 
safety. Accordingly, while the others were hastily 
harnessing the team, and tossing the bedding and 
provisions into the wagon, I threw the saddle on 
my horse, and galloped down the trail, to see if 



loo The Wilderness Hunter 

there was yet time to adopt this expedient. I 
soon found that there was not. Half a mile from 
camp the trail dipped into a deep coulie, where 
fair-sized trees and dense undergrowth made a 
long winding row of brush and timber. The trail 
led right under the trees at the upper end of this 
coulie. As I galloped by I saw that the fire had 
struck the trees a quarter of a mile below me ; in 
the dried timber it instantly sprang aloft like a 
giant, and roared in a thunderous monotone as it 
swept up the coulie. I galloped to the hill ridge 
ahead, saw that the fire line had already reached 
the divide, and turned my horse sharp on his 
haunches. As I again passed under the trees, the 
fire, running like a race -horse in the brush, had 
reached the road ; its breath was hot in my face ; 
tongues of quivering flame leaped over my head 
and kindled the grass on the hillside fifty yards 
away. 

When I got back to camp Ferguson had taken 
measures for the safety of the wagon. He had 
moved it across the coulie, which at this point had 
a wet bottom, making a bar to the progress of the 
flames until they had time to work across lower 
down. Meanwhile we fought to keep the fire from 
entering the well-grassed space on the hither side 
of the coulie, between it and a row of scoria buttes. 
Favored by a streak of clay ground, where the 
grass was sparse, we succeeded in beating out the 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst loi 

flame as it reached this clay streak, and again 
beating it out when it ran round the buttes and 
began to back up towards us against the wind. 
Then we recrossed the couHe with the wagon, be- 
fore the fire swept up the farther side; and so, 
when the flames passed by, they left us camped on 
a green oasis in the midst of a charred, smoking 
desert. We thus saved some good grazing for 
our horses. 

But our fight with the fire had only begun. No 
stockman will see a fire waste the range and de- 
stroy the winter feed of the stock without spending 
every ounce of his strength in the effort to put a 
stop to its ravages — even when, as in our case, the 
force of men and horses at hand is so small as to 
offer only the very slenderest hope of success. 

We set about the task in the way customary in 
the cattle country. It is impossible for any but a 
very large force to make head against a prairie fire 
while there is any wind ; but the wind usually fails 
after nightfall, and accordingly the main fight is 
generally waged during the hours of darkness. 

Before dark we drove to camp and shot a stray 
steer, and then split its carcass in two lengthwise 
with an axe. After sundown the wind lulled ; and 
we started towards the line of fire, which was 
working across a row of broken grassy hills three 
quarters of a mile distant. Two of US' were on 
horseback, dragging a half carcass, bloody side 



I02 The Wilderness Hunter 

down, by means of ropes leading from our saddle- 
horns to the fore and hind legs; the other two 
followed on foot with slickers and wet saddle 
blankets. There was a reddish glow in the night 
air, and the waving, bending lines of flame showed 
in great bright curves against the hillsides ahead 
of us. 

When we reached them, we foimd the fire burn- 
ing in a long, continuous line. It was not making 
rapid headway, for the air was still, and the flames 
stood upright, two or three feet high. Lengthen- 
ing the ropes, one of us spurred his horse across 
the fire line, and then, wheeling, we dragged the 
carcass along it ; one horseman being on the burnt 
ground, and one on the imburnt grass, while the 
body of the steer lay lengthwise across the line. 
The weight and the blood smothered the fire as 
we twitched the carcass over the burning grass; 
and the two men following behind with their 
blankets and slickers readily beating out any 
isolated tufts of flames. 

The fire made the horses wild, and it was not 
always easy to manage both them and the ropes, 
so as to keep the carcass true on the line. Some- 
times there would be a slight puff of wind, and 
then the man on the grass side of the line ran the 
risk of a scorching. We were blackened with 
smoke, and the taut ropes hurt our thighs ; while 
at times the plunging horses tried to buck or bolt. 



IhttU^Jf^inii^itxBiifMtJ'pD c 



-^ 



A Prairie Fire. 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 103 

It was worse when we came to some deep gully or 
ravine, breaking the line of fire. Into this we of 
course had to plunge, so as to get across to the fire 
on the other side. After the glare of the flame the 
blackness of the ravine was Stygian ; we could see 
nothing, and simply spurred our horses into it any- 
where, taking our chances. Down we would go, 
stumbling, sliding, and pitching, over cut banks 
and into holes and bushes, while the carcass 
bounded behind, now catching on a stump, and 
now fetching loose with a " pluck" that brought it 
full on the horses' haunches, driving them nearly 
crazy with fright. The pull up the opposite bank 
was, if anything, worse. 

By midnight the half-carcass was worn through ; 
but we had stifled the fire in the comparatively 
level country to the eastwards. Back we went to 
camp, drank huge draughts of muddy water, de- 
voured roast ox-ribs, and dragged out the other 
half carcass to fight the fire on the west. But 
after hours of wearing labor we found ourselves 
altogether baffled by the exceeding roughness of 
the ground. There was some little risk to us who 
were on horseback, dragging the carcass ; we had 
to feel our way along knife-like ridges in the dark, 
one ahead and the other behind, while the steer 
dangled over the precipice on one side; and in 
going down the buttes and into the canyons only 
by extreme care could we avoid getting tangled in 



I04 The Wilderness Hunter 

the ropes and rolling down in a heap. Moreover, 
the fire was in such rough places that the carcass 
could not be twitched fairly over it, and so we 
could not put it out. Before dawn we were 
obliged to abandon our fruitless efforts and seek 
camp, stiffened and weary. From a hill we looked 
back through the pitchy night at the fire we had 
failed to conquer. It had been broken into many 
lines by the roughness of the chasm-strewn and 
hilly coimtry. Of these lines of flame some were in 
advance, some behind, some rushing forward in 
full blast and fury, some standing still ; here and 
there one wheeling towards a flank, or burning in 
a semicircle round an isolated hill. Some of the 
lines were flickering out; gaps were showing in 
others. In the darkness it looked like the rush of 
a mighty army, bearing triumphantly onwards, in 
spite of a resistance so stubborn as to break its 
formation into many fragments and cause each 
one of them to wage its own battle for victory or 
defeat. 

On the wide plains where the prongbuck dwells 
the hunter must sometimes face thirst, as well as 
fire and frost. The only time I ever really suffered 
from thirst was while hunting prongbuck. 

It was late in the summer. I was with the 
ranch- wagon on the way to join a round-up, and 
as we were out of meat I started for a day's hunt. 
Before leaving in the morning I helped to haul the 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 105 

wagon across the river. It was fortunate I stayed, 
as it turned out. There was no regular ford where 
we made the crossing ; we anticipated no trouble, 
as the water was very low, the season being dry. 
However, we struck a quicksand, in which the 
wagon settled, while the frightened horses floun- 
dered helplessly. All the riders at once got their 
ropes on the wagon, and, hauling from the saddle, 
finally pulled it through. This took time ; and it 
was ten o'clock when I rode away from the river, 
at which my horse and I had just drunk— our last 
drink for over twenty-four hours, as it turned 
out. 

After two or three hours' ride, up winding cou- 
lies, and through the scorched desolation of patches 
of Bad Lands, I reached the rolling prairie. The 
heat and drought had long burned the short grass 
dull brown; the bottoms of what had been pools 
were covered with hard, dry, cracked earth. The 
day was cloudless, and the heat oppressive. There 
were many antelope, but I got only one shot, 
breaking a buck's leg; and, though I followed it 
for a couple of hours, I could not overtake it. By 
this time it was late in the afternoon, and I was 
far away from the river ; so I pushed for a creek, 
in the bed of which I had always found pools of 
water, especially toward the head, as is usual with 
plains watercourses. To my chagrin, however, 
they all proved to be dry ; and though I rode up 



io6 The Wilderness Hunter 

the creek bed toward the head, carefully searching 
for any sign of water, night closed on me before I 
found any. For two or three hours I stumbled on, 
leading my horse, in my fruitless search ; then a 
tumble over a cut bank in the dark warned me 
that I might as well stay where I was for the rest 
of the warm night. Accordingly, I unsaddled the 
horse, and tied him to a sage-brush ; after awhile 
he began to feed on the dewy grass. At first I 
was too thirsty to sleep. Finally I fell into slum- 
ber, and when I awoke at dawn I felt no thirst. 
For an hour or two more I continued my search 
for water in the creek bed ; then abandoned it and 
rode straight for the river. By the time we 
reached it my thirst had come back with re- 
doubled force, my mouth was parched, and the 
horse was in quite as bad a plight ; we rushed down 
to the brink, and it seem.ed as if we could neither 
of us ever drink our fill of the tepid, rather muddy 
water. Of course this experience was merely un- 
pleasant ; thirst is not a source of real danger in 
the plains country proper, whereas in the hideous 
deserts that extend from southern Idaho through 
Utah and Nevada to Arizona, it ever menaces 
with death the hunter and explorer. 

In the plains the weather is apt to be in ex- 
tremes; the heat is tropical, the cold arctic, and 
the droughts are relieved by furious floods. These 
are generally most severe and lasting in the spring, 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 107 

after the melting of the snow; and fierce local 
freshets follow the occasional cloudbursts. The 
large rivers then become wholly impassable, and 
even the smaller are formidable obstacles. It is 
not easy to get cattle across a swollen stream, 
where the current runs like a turbid mill-race over 
the bed of shifting quicksand. Once five of us took 
a thousand head of trail steers across the Little 
Missouri when the river was up, and it was no 
light task. The muddy current was boiling past 
the banks, covered with driftwood and foul yellow 
froth, and the frightened cattle shrank from en- 
tering it. At last, by hard riding, with much 
loud shouting and swinging of ropes, we got the 
leaders in, and the whole herd followed. After 
them we went in our turn, the horses swimming 
at one moment, and the next staggering and 
floundering through the quicksand. I was riding 
my pet cutting horse, Muley, which has the pro- 
voking habit of making great bounds where the 
water is just not deep enough for swimming ; once 
he almost unseated me. Some of the cattle were 
caught by the currents and rolled over and over; 
most of these we were able, with the help of our 
ropes, to put on their feet again; only one was 
drowned, or rather choked in a quicksand. Many 
swam down stream, and in consequence struck a 
difficult landing, where the river ran under a cut 
bank; these we had to haul out with our ropes. 



io8 The Wilderness Hunter 

Both men and horses were well tired by the time 
the whole herd was across. 

Although I have often had a horse down in 
quicksand, or in crossing a swollen river, and have 
had to work hard to save him, I have never myself 
lost one under such circumstances. Yet once I 
saw the horse of one of my men drown under 
him directly in front of the ranch-house, while 
he was trying to cross the river. This was in early 
spring, soon after the ice had broken. 

When making long wagon-trips over the great 
plains, antelope often offer the only source of meat 
supply, save for occasional water-fowl, sage-fowl, 
and prairie-fowl — the sharp-tailed prairie-fowl, be 
it understood. This is the characteristic grouse of 
the cattle country ; the true prairie-fowl is a bird of 
the farming land farther east. 

Towards the end of the summer of '92 I found it 
necessary to travel from my ranch to the Black 
Hills, some two hundred miles south. The ranch- 
wagon went with me, driven by an all-round 
plainsman, a man of iron nerves and varied past, 
the sheriff of our county. He was an old friend of 
mine ; at one time I had served as deputy-sheriff 
for the northern end of the county. In the wagon 
we carried our food and camp kit, and our three 
rolls of bedding, each wrapped in a thick, nearly 
waterproof canvas sheet; we had a tent, but we 
never needed it. The load being light, the wagon 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 109 

was drawn by but a span of horses — a pair of wild 
runaways, tough, and good travellers. My fore- 
man and I rode beside the wagon on our wiry, un- 
kempt, unshod cattle-ponies. They carried us all 
day at a rack, pace, single-foot, or slow lope, varied 
by rapid galloping when we made long circles 
after game ; the trot, the favorite gait with eastern 
park-riders, is disliked by all peoples who have to 
do much of their life-work in the saddle. 

The first day's ride was not attractive. The heat 
was intense and the dust stifling, as we had to 
drive some loose horses for the first few miles, and 
afterwards to ride up and down the sandy river- 
bed, where the cattle had gathered, to look over 
some young steers we had put on the range the 
preceding spring. When we did camp it was by a 
pool of stagnant water, in a creek bottom, and the 
mosquitoes were a torment. Nevertheless, as eve- 
ning fell, it was pleasant to climb a little knoll 
nearby and gaze at the rows of strangely colored 
buttes, grass-clad, or of bare earth and scoria, 
their soft reds and purples showing as through a 
haze, and their irregular outlines gradually losing 
their sharpness in the fading twilight. 

Next morning the weather changed, growing 
cooler, and we left the tangle of ravines and Bad 
Lands, striking out across the vast sea-like prairies. 
Hour after hour, under the bright sun, the wagon 
drew slowly ahead, over the immense rolling 



no The Wilderness Hunter 

stretches of short grass, dipping down each long 
slope until it reached the dry, imperfectly out- 
lined creek bed at the bottom, — wholly devoid of 
water and without so much as a shrub of wood, — 
and then ascending the gentle rise on the other 
side until at last it topped the broad divide, or 
watershed, beyond which lay the shallow, winding 
coulies of another creek system. From each rise 
of ground we looked far and wide over the sunlit 
prairie, with its interminable undulations. The 
sicklebill curlews which in spring, while breeding, 
hover above the travelling horseman with cease- 
less clamor, had for the most part gone southward. 
We saw only one small party of half a dozen birds ; 
they paid little heed to us, but piped to one another, 
making short flights, and on alighting stood erect, 
first spreading and then folding and setting their 
wings with a slow, graceful motion. Little horned 
larks continually ran along the ruts of the faint 
wagon-track, just ahead of the team, and twittered 
plaintively as they rose, while flocks of longspurs 
swept hither and thither, in fitful, irregular flight. 
My foreman and I usually rode far off to one 
side of the wagon, looking out for antelope. Of 
these we at first saw few, but they grew more 
plentiful as we journeyed onward, approaching a 
big, scantily wooded creek, where I had found the 
pronghorn abundant in previous seasons. They 
were very wary and watchful, whether going 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst m 

singly or in small parties, and the lay of the land 
made it exceedingly difficult to get within range. 
The last time I had hunted in this neighborhood 
was in the fall, at the height of the rutting season. 
Prongbucks, even more than other game, seem 
fairly maddened by erotic excitement. At the 
time of my former hunt they were in ceaseless 
motion ; each master buck being incessantly occu- 
pied in herding his harem, and fighting would-be 
rivals, while single bucks chased single does as 
greyhounds chase hares, or else, if no does were in 
sight, from sheer excitement ran to and fro as if 
crazy, racing at full speed in one direction, then 
halting, wheeling, and tearing back again just as 
hard as they could go. 

At this time, however, the rut was still some 
weeks off, and all the bucks had to do was to feed 
and keep a lookout for enemies. Try my best, I 
could not get within less than four or five hundred 
yards, and though I took a number of shots at 
these, or at even longer distances, I missed. If a 
man is out merely for a day's hunt, and has all the 
time he wishes, he will not scare the game and 
waste cartridges by shooting at such long ranges, 
preferring to spend half a day or more in patient 
waiting and careful stalking ; but if he is travelling, 
and is therefore cramped for time, he must take 
his chances, even at the cost of burning a good 
deal of powder. 



112 The Wilderness Hunter 

I was finally helped to success by a characteris- 
tic freak of the game I was following. No other 
animals are as keen-sighted, or are normally as 
wary as pronghorns ; but no others are so whim- 
sical and odd in their behavior at times, or so sub- 
ject to fits of the most stupid curiosity and panic. 
Late in the afternoon, on topping a rise, I saw two 
good bucks racing off about three hundred yards 
to one side; I sprang to the ground, and fired 
three shots at them in vain, as they ran like quar- 
ter-horses until they disappeared over a slight 
swell. In a minute, however, back they came, 
suddenly appearing over the crest of the same 
swell, immediately in front of me, and, as I after- 
wards foimd by pacing, some three hundred and 
thirty yards away. They stood side by side facing 
me, and remained motionless, unheeding the crack 
of the Winchester ; I aimed at the right-hand one, 
but a front shot of the kind, at such a distance, is 
rather difficult, and it was not until I fired for the 
fourth time that he sank back out of sight. I 
could not tell whether I had killed him, and took 
two shots at his mate, as the latter went off, but 
without effect. Running forward, I found the first 
one dead, the bullet having gone through him 
lengthwise ; the other did not seem satisfied even 
yet, and kept hanging round in the distance for 
some minutes, looking at us. 

I had thus bagged one prongbuck, as the net 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 113 

outcome of the expenditure of fourteen cartridges. 
This was certainly not good shooting ; but neither 
was it as bad as it would seem to the man inex- 
perienced in antelope hunting. When fresh meat 
is urgently needed, and when time is too short, the 
hunter who is after antelope in an open, flattish 
country must risk many long shots. In no other 
kind of hunting is there so much long-distance 
shooting, or so many shots fired for every head of 
game bagged. 

Throwing the buck into the wagon we continued 
our journey across the prairie, no longer following 
any road, and before sunset jolted down towards 
the big creek for which we had been heading. 
There were many water-holes therein, and timber 
of considerable size ; box-alder and ash grew here 
and there in clumps and fringes, beside the ser- 
pentine curves of the nearly dry torrent bed, the 
growth being thickest imder the shelter of the 
occasional low bluffs. We drove down to a heavily 
grassed bottom, near a deep, narrow pool, with, at 
one end, that rarest of luxuries in the plains 
country, a bubbling spring of pure, cold water. 
With plenty of wood, delicious water, ample feed 
for the horses, and fresh meat we had every com- 
fort and luxury incident to camp life in good 
weather. The bedding was tossed out on a smooth 
spot beside the wagon; the horses were watered 
and tethered to picket-pins where the feed was 



VOL. 1. — 8 



114 The Wilderness Hunter 

best ; water was fetched from the spring ; a deep 
hole was dug for the fire, and the grass round about 
carefully burned off; and in a few moments the 
bread was baking in the Dutch oven, the potatoes 
were boiling, antelope steaks were sizzling in the 
frying-pan, and the kettle was ready for the tea. 
After supper, eaten with the relish known well to 
every hardworking and successful hunter, we sat 
for half an hour or so round the fire, and then 
turned in imder the blankets, pulled the tarpaulins 
over us, and listened drowsily to the wailing of the 
coyotes until we fell sound asleep. 

We determined to stay in this camp all day, so 
as to try and kill another prongbuck, as we 
would soon be past the good hunting-grounds. I 
did not have to go far for my game next morning, 
for soon after breakfast, while sitting on my can- 
vas bag cleaning my rifle, the sheriff suddenly 
called to me that a bunch of antelope was coming 
towards us. Sure enough there they were, four in 
number, rather over half a mile off, on the first 
bench of the prairie, two or three hundred yards 
back from the creek, leisurely feeding in our direc- 
tion. In a minute or two they were out of sight, 
and I instantly ran along the creek towards them 
for a quarter of a mile, and then crawled up a 
short, shallow coulie, close to the head of which 
they seemed likely to pass. When nearly at the 
end I cautiously raised my hatless head, peered 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 115 

through some straggling weeds, and at once saw 
the horns of the buck. He was a big fellow, about 
a hundred and twenty yards off ; the others, a doe 
and two kids, were in front. As I lifted myself 
on my elbows he halted and turned his raised head 
towards me; the sunlight shone bright on his 
supple, vigorous body with its markings of sharply 
contrasted brown and white. I pulled trigger, 
and away he went ; but I could see that his race 
was nearly run, and he fell after going a few hun- 
dred yards. 

Soon after this a windstorm blew up, so violent 
that we could hardly face it. In the late after- 
noon it died away, and I again walked out to 
hunt, but saw only does and kids, at which I 
would not shoot. As the sun set, leaving bars of 
amber and pale red in the western sky, the air be- 
came absolutely calm. In the waning evening the 
low, far-off ridges were touched with a violet light ; 
then the hues grew sombre, and still darkness fell 
on the lonely prairie. 

Next morning we drove to the river, and kept 
near it for several days, most of the time following 
the tracks made by the heavy wagons accompany- 
ing the trail-herds — this being one of the regular 
routes followed by the great throng of slow-moving 
cattle yearly driven from the south. At other 
times we made our own road. Twice or thrice 
we passed ranch-houses; the men being absent 



ii6 The Wilderness Hunter 

on the round-up, they were shut, save one, which 
was inhabited by two or three lean Texan cow- 
punchers, with sun-burned faces and reckless 
eyes, who had come up with a trail-herd from the 
Cherokee strip. Once, near the old Sioux crossing, 
where the Dakota war-bands used to ford the river 
on their forays against the Crows and the settlers 
along the Yellowstone, we met a large horse-herd. 
The tough, shabby, tired-looking animals, one or 
two of which were loaded with bedding and a 
scanty supply of food, were driven by three travel- 
worn, hard-faced men, with broad hats, shaps, and 
long pistols in their belts. They had brought the 
herd over plain and mountain pass all the way 
from far distant Oregon. 

It was a wild, rough country, bare of trees, save 
for a fringe of cottonwoods along the river, and 
occasional clumps of cedar on the jagged, brown 
buttes; as we went farther the hills turned the 
color of chalk, and were covered with a growth of 
pine. We came upon acres of sunflowers as we 
journeyed southward ; they are not as tall as they 
are in the rich bottom lands of Kansas, where the 
splendid blossoms, on their strong stalks, stand as 
high as the head of a man on horseback. 

Though there were many cattle here, big game 
was scarce. However, I killed plenty of prairie- 
chickens and sage-hens for the pot; and as the 
sage-hens were still feeding largely on crickets 



Frost, Fire, and Thirst 117 

and grasshoppers, and not exclusively on sage, 
they were just as good eating as the prairie- 
chickens. I used the rifle, cutting off their heads 
or necks, and, as they had to be shot on the 
ground, and often while in motion, or else while 
some distance away, it was more difficult than 
shooting off the heads of grouse in the mountains, 
where the birds sit motionless in trees. The head 
is a small mark, while to hit the body is usually to 
spoil the bird ; so I found that I averaged three or 
four cartridges for every head neatly taken off, 
the remaining shots representing spoiled birds and 
misses. 

For the last sixty or seventy miles of our trip 
we left the river and struck off across a great, deso- 
late gumbo prairie. There was no game, no wood 
for fuel, and the rare water-holes were far apart, 
so that we were glad when, as we toiled across the 
monotonous succession of long, swelling ridges, 
the dim, cloud-like mass, looming vague and purple 
on the rim of the horizon ahead of us, gradually 
darkened and hardened into the bold outline of 
the Black Hills. 



CHAPTER VI 

AMONG THE HIGH HILLS ; THE BIGHORN OR MOUN- 
TAIN SHEEP 

DURING the summer of 1886 I hunted 
chiefly to keep the ranch in meat. It 
was a very pleasant summer; although 
it was followed by the worst winter we ever wit- 
nessed on the plains. I was much at the ranch, 
where I had a good deal of writing to do; but 
every week or two I left, to ride among the line 
camps, or spend a few days on any round-up 
which happened to be in the neighborhood. 

These days of vigorous work among the cattle 
were themselves full of pleasure. At dawn we 
were in the saddle, the morning air cool in our 
faces; the red sunrise saw us loping across the 
grassy reaches of prairie land, or climbing in single 
file among the rugged buttes. All the forenoon we 
spent riding the long circle with the cow-punchers 
of the round-up ; in the afternoon we worked the 
herd, cutting the cattle, with much breakneck 
galloping and dextrous halting and wheeling. 
Then came the excitement and hard labor of rop- 
ing, throwing, and branding the wild and vigorous 

1(8 



Among the High Hills 119 

range calves — in a corral, if one was handy ; other- 
wise, in a ring of horsemen. Soon after nightfall 
we lay down — in a log hut or tent, if at a line camp ; 
under the open sky, if with the round-up wagon. 

After ten days or so of such work, in which 
every man had to do his full share, — for laggards 
and idlers, no matter who, get no mercy in the real 
and healthy democracy of the round-up, — I would 
go back to the ranch to turn to my books with 
added zest for a fortnight. Yet even during these 
weeks at the ranch there was some outdoor work ; 
for I was breaking two or three colts. I took my 
time, breaking them gradually and gently — not, 
after the usual cowboy fashion, in a hurry, by 
sheer main strength and rough riding, with the at- 
tendant danger to the limbs of the man and very 
probable ruin to the manners of the horse. We 
rose early; each morning I stood on the low- 
roofed verandah, looking out, under the line of 
murmuring, glossy-leaved cottonwoods, across the 
shallow river, to see the sun flame above the line of 
bliiffs opposite. In the evening I strolled off for 
an hour or two's walk, rifle in hand. The roomy, 
home-like ranch-house, with its log walls, shingled 
roof, and big chimneys and fireplaces, stands in a 
glade, in the midst of the thick forest, which covers 
half the bottom ; behind rises, bare and steep, the 
wall of peaks, ridges, and table-lands. 

During the summer in question, I once or twice 



I20 The Wilderness Hunter 

shot a whitetail buck right on this large bottom ; 
once or twice I killed a blacktail in the hills behind, 
not a mile from the ranch-house. Several times I 
killed and brought in prongbucks, rising before 
dawn, and riding off on a good horse for an all- 
day's hunt in the rolling prairie country, twelve or 
fifteen miles away. Occasionally I took the wagon 
and one of the men, driving to some good hunting- 
groiind and spending a night or two; usually re- 
turning with two or three prongbucks, and once 
with an elk — but this was later in the fall. Not 
infrequently I went away by myself on horseback 
for a couple of days, when all the men were on the 
round-up, and when I wished to hunt thoroughly 
some country quite a distance from the ranch. 
I made one such hunt in late August, because I 
happened to hear that a small bunch of mountain 
sheep were haunting a tract of very broken 
ground, with high hills, about fifteen miles away. 

I left the ranch early in the morning, riding my 
favorite hunting-horse, old Manitou. The blanket 
and oilskin slicker were rolled and strapped be- 
hind the saddle; for provisions I carried salt, a 
small bag of hardtack, and a little tea and sugar, 
with a metal cup in which to boil my water. The 
rifle and a score of cartridges in my woven belt 
completed my outfit. On my journey I shot two 
prairie-chickens from a covey in the bottom of a 
brush coulie. 



Among the High Hills 121 

I rode more than six hours before reaching a 
good spot to camp. At first my route lay across 
grassy plateaus, and along smooth, wooded cou- 
Hes ; but after a few miles the ground became very 
rugged and difficult. At last I got into the heart 
of the Bad Lands proper, where the hard, wrinkled 
earth was torn into shapes as sullen and grotesque 
as those of dreamland. The hills rose high, their 
barren flanks carved and channelled, their tops 
mere needles and knife crests. Bands of black, 
red, and purple varied the gray and yellow-brown 
of their sides ; the tufts of scanty vegetation were 
dull green. Sometimes I rode my horse at the 
bottom of narrow washouts, between straight 
walls of clay, but a few feet apart; sometimes I 
had to lead him as he scrambled up, down, and 
across the sheer faces of the buttes. The glare 
from the bare clay walls dazzled the eye ; the air 
was burning under the hot August sun. I saw 
nothing living except the rattlesnakes, of which 
there were very many. 

At last, in the midst of this devil's wilderness, I 
came on a lovely valley. A spring trickled out of 
a cedar canyon, and below this spring the narrow, 
deep ravine was green with luscious grass, and 
was smooth for some hundreds of yards. Here I 
imsaddled, and turned old Manitou loose to drink 
and feed at his leisure. At the edge of the dark 
cedar wood I cleared a spot for my bed, and drew 



122 The Wilderness Hunter 

a few dead sticks for the fire. Then I lay down 
and watched drowsily until the afternoon shadows 
filled the wild and beautiful gorge in which I was 
camped. This happened early, for the valley was 
very narrow and the hills on either hand were 
steep and high. 

Springing to my feet, I climbed the nearest 
ridge, and then made my way, by hard clamber- 
ing, from peak to peak and from crest to crest, 
sometimes crossing and sometimes skirting the 
deep washouts and canyons. When possible, I 
avoided appearing on the sky-line, and I moved 
with the utmost caution, walking in a wide sweep 
so as to hunt across and up wind. There was 
much sheep sign, some of it fresh, though I saw 
none of the animals themselves ; the square slots, 
with the indented marks of the toe points wide 
apart, contrasting strongly with the heart-shaped 
and delicate footprints of deer. The animals had, 
according to their habit, beaten trails along the 
summits of the higher crests ; little side-trails lead- 
ing to any spur, peak, or other vantage point from 
which there was a wide outlook over the country 
roundabout. 

The bighorns of the Bad Lands, unlike those of 
the mountains, shift their range but little, winter 
or summer. Save in the breeding season, when 
each master ram gets together his own herd, the 
ewes, lambs, and yearlings are apt to go in bands 



The Bighorn or Mountain*Sheep 123 

by themselves, while the males wander in small 
parties; now and then a very morose old fellow 
lives by himself, in some precipitous, out-of-the- 
way retreat. The rut begins with them much 
later than with deer; the exact time varies with 
the locahty, but it is always after the bitter winter 
weather has set in. Then the old rams fight 
fiercely together, and on rare occasions utter a 
long grunting bleat or call. They are marvellous 
climbers, and dwell by choice always among cliffs 
and jagged, broken ground, whether wooded or 
not. An old bighorn ram is heavier than the 
largest buck ; his huge, curved horns, massive yet 
supple build, and proud bearing mark him as one 
of the noblest beasts of the chase. He is wary; 
great skill and caution must be shown in approach- 
ing him; and no one but a good climber, with a 
steady head, sound lungs, and trained muscles, 
can successfully hunt him in his own rugged fast- 
nesses. The chase of no other kind of American 
big game ranks higher, or more thoroughly tests 
the manliest qualities of the hunter, 

I walked back to camp in the gloaming, taking 
care to reach it before it grew really dark; for in 
the Bad Lands it is entirely impossible to travel, 
or to find any given locality, after nightfall. Old 
Manitou had eaten his fill and looked up at me 
with pricked ears and wise, friendly face as I 
climbed down the side of the cedar canyon ; then 



124 The Wilderness Hunter 

he came slowly towards me to see if I had not 
something for him. I rubbed his soft nose and 
gave him a cracker ; then I picketed him to a soli- 
tary cedar, where the feed was good. Afterwards 
I kindled a small fire, roasted both prairie-fowl, 
ate one, and put the other by for breakfast ; and 
soon rolled myself in my blanket, with the saddle 
for a pillow, and the oilskin beneath. Manitou 
was munching the grass nearby. I lay just out- 
side the line of stiff black cedars; the night air 
was soft in my face; I gazed at the shining and 
brilliant multitude of stars until my eyelids closed. 
The chill breath which comes before dawn 
awakened me. It was still and dark. Through 
the gloom I could indistinctly make out the loom 
of the old horse, lying down. I was speedily 
ready, and groped and stumbled slowly up the 
hill, and then along its crest to a peak. Here I 
sat down and waited a quarter of an hour or so, 
until gray appeared in the east, and the dim 
light-streaks enabled me to walk farther. Before 
sunrise I was two miles from camp ; then I crawled 
cautiously to a high ridge and, crouching behind it, 
scanned all the landscape eagerly. In a few min- 
utes a movement about a third of a mile to the 
right, midway down a hill, caught my eye. An- 
other glance showed me three white specks moving 
along the hillside. They were the white rumps of 
three fine mountain sheep, on their way to drink 



The Bighorn or Mountain Sheep 125 

at a little alkaline pool in the bottom of a deep, 
narrow valley. In a moment they went out of 
sight round a bend of the valley ; and I rose and 
trotted briskly towards them, along the ridge. 
There were two or three deep gullies to cross, and 
a high shoulder over which to clamber ; so I was 
out of breath when I reached the bend beyond 
which they had disappeared. Taking advantage 
of a scrawny sage-brush a^ cover, I peeped over the 
edge, and at once saw the sheep — three big young 
rams. They had finished drinking, and were 
standing beside the little miry pool, about three 
hundred yards distant. Slipping back, I dropped 
down into the bottom of the valley, where a nar- 
row washout zigzagged from side to side, between 
straight walls of clay. The pool was in the upper 
end of this washout, under a cut bank. 

An indistinct game trail, evidently sometimes 
used by both bighorn and blacktail, ran up this 
washout ; the bottom was of clay, so that I walked 
noiselessly ; and the crookedness of the washout's 
course afforded ample security against discovery 
by the sharp eyes of the quarry. In a couple of 
minutes I stalked stealthily round the last bend, 
my rifle cocked and at the ready, expecting to see 
the rams by the pool. However, they had gone, 
and the muddy water was settling in their deep 
hoof -marks. Running on, I looked over the edge 
of the cut bank and saw them slowly quartering 



126 The Wilderness Hunter 

up the hillside, cropping the sparse tufts of coarse 
grass, I whistled, and as they stood at gaze I 
put a bullet into the biggest, a little too far aft of 
the shoulder, but ranging forward. He raced 
after the others, but soon fell behind, and turned 
off on his own line, at a walk, with drooping head. 
As he bled freely, I followed his tracks, found him, 
very sick, in a washout a quarter of a mile beyond, 
and finished him with another shot. After dress- 
ing him, and cutting off the saddle and hams, as 
well as the head, I walked back to camp, break- 
fasted, and rode Manitou to where the sheep lay. 
Packing it securely behind the saddle, and shifting 
the blanket-roll to in front of the saddle-horn, I 
led the horse until we were clear of the Bad Lands ; 
then mounted him, and was back at the ranch soon 
after midday. The mutton of a fat young moun- 
tain ram, at this season of the year, is delicious. 

Such quick success is rare in hunting sheep. 
Generally each head has cost me several days of 
hard, faithful work; and more than once I have 
hunted over a week without any reward whatso- 
ever. But the quarry is so noble that the ulti- 
mate triumph — sure to come, if the hunter will 
but persevere long enough — atones for all pre- 
vious toil and failure. 

Once a lucky stalk and shot at a bighorn was 
almost all that redeemed a hunt in the Rockies 
from failure. I was high among the mountains 



The Bighorn or Mountain Sheep 127 

at the time, but was dogged by ill luck; I had 
seen but little, and I had not shot very well. One 
morning I rose early, and himted steadily until 
midday without seeing anything. A mountain 
hunter was with me. At noon we sat down to 
rest, and look over the country, from behind a 
shield of dwarf evergreens, on the brink of a 
mighty chasm. The rocks fell downwards in huge 
cliffs, stern and barren; from far below rose the 
strangled roaring of the torrent, as the foaming 
masses of green and white water churned round 
the boulders in the stream bed. Except this 
humming of the wild water, and the soughing of 
the pines, there was no sound. We were sitting 
on a kind of jutting promontory of rock, so that we 
could scan the cliffs far and near. First, I took the 
glasses, and scrutinized the ground almost rod by 
rod, for nearly half an hour ; then my companion 
took them in turn. It is very hard to make out 
game, especially when lying down, and still; and 
it is curious to notice how, after fruitlessly scan- 
ning a country through the glasses for a consid- 
erable period, a herd of animals will suddenly 
appear in the field of vision as if by magic. In 
this case, while my companion held the glasses for 
the second time, a slight motion caught his eye ; 
and looking attentively he made out, five or six 
hundred yards distant, a mountain ram lying 
among some loose rocks and small bushes at the 



128 The Wilderness Hunter 

head of a little grassy cove or nook, in a shallow 
break between two walls of the cliff. So well did 
the bluish gray of its body harmonize in tint with 
the rocks and shrubbery that it was some time 
before I could see it, even when pointed out to me. 
The wind was favorable, and we at once drew 
back and began a cautious stalk. It was impos- 
sible, owing to the nature of the cliffs above and 
below the bighorn's resting-place, to get a shot 
save by creeping along nearly on a level with him. 
Accordingly we worked our way down through a 
big cleft in the rocks, being forced to go very 
slowly and carefully lest we should start a loose 
stone, and at last reached a narrow terrace of 
rock and grass, along which we walked compara- 
tively at our ease. Soon it dwindled away, and 
we then had to do our only difficult piece of climb- 
ing — a clamber for fifty or sixty feet across a steep 
cliff shoulder. Some little niches and cracks in 
the rock and a few projections and diminutive 
ledges on its surface, barely enabled us to swarm 
across, with painstaking care — not merely to 
avoid alarming the game this time, but also to 
avoid a slip which would have proved fatal. Once 
across, we came on a long, grassy shelf, leading 
round a shoulder into the cleft where the ram lay. 
As I neared the end I crept forward on hands and 
knees, and then crawled flat, shoving the rifle 
ahead of me, until I rounded the shoulder and 



The Bighorn or Mountain Sheep 129 

peered into the rift. As my eyes fell on the ram 
he sprang to his feet, with a clatter of loose stones, 
and stood facing me, some sixty yards off, his dark 
face and white muzzle brought out finely by the 
battered, curved horns. I shot into his chest, 
hitting him in the sticking-place ; and after a few 
mad bounds he tumbled headlong, and fell a very 
great distance, unfortunately injuring one horn. 

When much hunted, bighorn become the wariest 
of all American game, and their chase is then 
peculiarly laborious and exciting. But where 
they have known nothing of men, not having been 
molested by hunters, they are exceedingly tame. 
Professor John Bache McMaster informs me that 
in 1877 he penetrated to the Uintah Mountains of 
Wyoming, which were then almost unknown to 
hunters ; he found all the game very bold, and the 
wild sheep in particular so unsuspicious that he 
could walk up to within short rifle-range of them 
in the open. 

On the high mountains bighorn occasionally 
get killed by a snow-slide. My old friend, the 
hunter Woody, once saw a band which started 
such an avalanche by running along a steep slop- 
ing snow-field, it being in the spring; for several 
hundred yards it thundered at their heels, but by 
desperate racing they just managed to get clear. 
Woody was also once an eye-witness to the rav- 
ages the cougar commits among these wild sheep. 



I30 The Wilderness Hunter 

He was stalking a band in the snow when he saw 
them suddenly scatter at a run in every direction. 
Coming up he found the traces of a struggle, 
and the track of a body being dragged through 
the snow, together with the round footmarks of the 
cougar; a little farther on lay a dead ewe, the 
blood flowing from the fang wounds in her throat. 



CHAPTER VII 

MOUNTAIN game; THE WHITE-GOAT 

LATE one August I started on a trip to the 
Big Hole Basin, in western Montana, to 
hunt white-goats. With me went a friend 
of many hunts, John WilHs, a tried mountain-man. 
We left the railroad at the squalid Httle hamlet 
of Divide, where we hired a team and wagon from 
a " busted" granger, suspected of being a Mormon, 
who had failed, even with the help of irrigation, 
in raising a crop. The wagon was in fairly good 
order ; the harness was rotten, and needed patch- 
ing with ropes; while the team consisted of two 
spoiled horses, overworked and thin, but full of 
the devil the minute they began to pick up condi- 
tion. However, on the frontier one soon grows to 
accept little facts of this kind with bland indiffer- 
ence ; and Willis was not only an expert teamster, 
but possessed that inexhaustible fertility of re- 
source and unfailing readiness in an emergency 
so characteristic of the veteran of the border. 
Through hard experience he had become master of 
plainscraft and woodcraft, skilled in all frontier 
lore. 

For a couple of days we jogged up the valley of 

131 



132 The Wilderness Hunter 

the Big Hole River, along the mail road. At 
night we camped under our wagon. At the mouth 
of the stream the valley was a mere gorge, but it 
broadened steadily the farther up we went, till 
the rapid river wound through a wide expanse of 
hilly, treeless prairie. On each side the mountains 
rose, their lower flanks and the foothills covered 
with the evergreen forest. We got milk and bread 
at the scattered log-houses of the few settlers; 
and for meat we shot sage-fowl, which abounded. 
They were feeding on grasshoppers at this time, 
and the flesh, especially of the young birds, was as 
tender and well tasting as possible ; whereas, when 
we again passed through the valley in September, 
we found the birds almost uneatable, being fairly 
bitter with sage. Like all grouse, they are far 
tamer earlier in the season than later, being very 
wild in winter; and, of course, they are boldest 
where they are least hunted; but for some un- 
explained reason they are always tamer than the 
sharp-tail prairie-fowl which are to be found in the 
same locality. 

Finally, we reached the neighborhood of the 
Battle Ground, where a rude stone monument 
commemorates the bloody drawn fight between 
General Gibbons's soldiers and the Nez Perces 
warriors of Chief Joseph. Here, on the third day 
of our journey, we left the beaten road and turned 
toward the mountains, following an indistinct 



Mountain Game 133 

trail made by wood-choppers. We met with our 
full share of the usual mishaps incident to prairie 
travel; and towards evening our team got mired 
in crossing a slough. We attempted the crossing 
with some misgivings, which were warranted by 
the result; for the second plunge of the horses 
brought them up to their bellies in the morass, 
where they stuck. It was freezing cold, with a 
bitter wind blowing, and the bog holes were 
skimmed with ice ; so that we passed a thoroughly 
wretched two hours while freeing the horses and 
unloading the wagon. However, we eventually 
got across; my companion preserving an abso- 
lutely unruffled temper throughout, perseveringly 
whistling the " Arkansas Traveller." At one pe- 
riod, when we were up to our waists in the icy 
mud, it began to sleet and hail, and I muttered 
that I would "rather it did n't storm"; whereat 
he stopped whistling for a moment to make the 
laconic rejoinder, " We 're not having our rathers 
this trip." 

At nightfall we camped among the willow bushes 
by a little brook. For firewood we had only dead 
willow sticks ; they made a hot blaze which soon 
died out ; and as the cold grew intense, we rolled 
up in our blankets as soon as we had eaten our 
supper. The climate of the Big Hole Basin is 
alpine ; that night, though it was the 20th of Au- 
gust, the thermometer sank to 10° F. 



134 The Wilderness Hunter 

Early next morning we struck camp, shivering 
with cold as we threw the stiff, frozen harness on 
the horses. We soon got among the foot-hills, 
where the forest was open and broken by large 
glades, forming what is called a park country. The 
higher we went the smaller grew the glades and 
the denser the woodland ; and it began to be very 
difficult to get the wagon forward. In many 
places one man had to go ahead to pick out the 
way, and, if necessary, to do a little chopping and 
lopping with the axe, while the other followed, 
driving the team. At last we were brought to a 
standstill, and pitched camp beside a rapid, alder- 
choked brook in the uppermost of a series of rolling 
glades, hemmed in by mountains and the dense 
coniferous forest. Our tent stood under a grove 
of pines, close to the brook; at night we built in 
front of it a big fire of crackling, resinous logs. 
Our goods were sheltered by the wagon, or cov- 
ered with a tarpaulin; we threw down sprays of 
odorous evergreens to make a resting-place for our 
bedding ; we built small scaffolds on which to dry 
the flesh of elk and deer. In an hour or two we 
had round us all the many real comforts of such a 
little wilderness home. 

Whoever has long roamed and hunted in the 
wilderness always cherishes with wistful pleasure 
the memory of some among the countless camps 
he has made. The camp by the margin of the 



Mountain Game 135 

clear, mountain-hemmed lake; the camp in the 
dark and melancholy forest, where the gusty wind 
booms through the tall pine tops ; the camp under 
gnarled cotton woods, on the bank of a shrunken 
river, in the midst of endless grassy prairies, — of 
these, and many like them, each has had its own 
charm. Of course, in hunting one must expect 
much hardship and repeated disappointment ; and 
in many a camp, bad weather, lack of shelter, hun- 
ger, thirst, or ill success with game, renders the days 
and nights irksome and trying. Yet the hunter 
worthy of the name always willingly takes the 
bitter if by so doing he can get the sweet, and 
gladly balances failure and success, spurning the 
poorer souls who know neither. 

We turned our horses loose, hobbling one ; and 
as we did not look after them for several days, 
nothing but my companion's skill as a tracker 
enabled us to find them again. There was a spell 
of warm weather which brought out a few of the 
big bull-dog flies, which drive a horse — or indeed a 
man — nearly frantic; we were in the haunts of 
these dreaded and terrible scourges, which up to 
the beginning of August render it impossible to 
keep stock of any description unprotected, but 
which are never formidable after the first frost. 
In many parts of the wilderness these pests, or 
else the incredible swarms of mosquitoes, black- 
flies, and buffalo-gnats, render life not worth 



136 The Wilderness Hunter 

living during the last weeks of spring and the 
early months of summer. 

There were elk and deer in the neighborhood; 
also ruffed, blue, and spruce grouse; so that our 
camp was soon stocked with meat. Early one 
morning, while Willis was washing in the brook, a 
little black bear thrust its sharp nose through the 
alders a few feet from him, and then hastily with- 
drew and was seen no more. The smaller wild 
folk were more familiar. As usual in the northern 
mountains, the gray moose-birds and voluble, ner- 
vous little chipmunks made themselves at home 
in the camp. Parties of chickadees visited us oc- 
casionally. A family of flying squirrels lived 
overhead in the grove ; and at nightfall they swept 
noiselessly from tree to tree, in long, graceful 
curves. There were sparrows of several kinds 
moping about in the alders; and now and then 
one of them would sing a few sweet, rather mourn- 
ful bars. 

After several days' preliminary exploration we 
started on foot for white-goat. We took no packs 
with us, each carrying merely his jacket, with a 
loaf of bread and a paper of salt thrust into the 
pockets. Our aim was to get well to one side of a 
cluster of high, bare peaks, and then to cross them 
and come back to camp; we reckoned that the 
trip would take three days. 

All the first day we tramped through dense 



The White-Goat 137 

woods and across and around steep mountain 
spurs. We caught glimpses of two or three deer 
and a couple of elk, all does or fawns, however, 
which we made no effort to molest. Late in the 
afternoon we stumbled across a family of spruce 
grouse, which furnished us material for both sup- 
per and breakfast. The mountain-men call this 
bird the fool-hen ; and most certainly it deserves 
the name. The members of this particular flock, 
consisting of a hen and her three-parts grown 
chickens, acted with a stupidity im wonted even 
for their kind. They were feeding on the grotmd 
among some young spruce, and on our approach 
flew up and perched in the branches four or five 
feet above our heads. There they stayed, utter- 
ing a low, complaining whistle, and showed not 
the slightest suspicion when we came underneath 
them with long sticks and knocked four off their 
perches — for we did not wish to alarm any large 
game that might be in the neighborhood by firing. 
One particular bird was partially saved from my 
first blow by the intervening twigs; however, it 
merely flew a few yards, and then sat with its bill 
open, — having evidently been a little hurt, — until 
I came up and knocked it over with a better di- 
rected stroke. 

Spruce grouse are plentiful in the mountain 
forests of the northern Rockies, and, owing to 
the ease with which they are killed, they have 



138 The Wilderness Hunter 

furnished me my usual provender when off on trips 
of this kind, where I carried no pack. They are 
marvellously tame and stupid. The young birds 
are the only ones I have ever killed in this manner 
with a stick ; but even a full-plumaged old cock in 
September is easily slain with a stone by any one 
who is at all a good thrower. A man who has 
played much base-ball need never use a gun when 
after spruce grouse. They are the smallest of the 
grouse kind; the cock is very handsome, with red 
eyebrows and dark glossy plumage. Moreover, he 
is as brave as he is stupid and good-looking, and in 
the love season becomes fairly crazy ; at such time 
he will occasionally make a feint of attacking a 
man, strutting, fluttering, and ruffling his feathers. 
The flesh of the spruce grouse is not so good as 
that of his ruffed and blue kinsfolk ; and in winter, 
when he feeds on spruce buds, it is ill tasting. I 
have never been able to understand why closely 
allied species, under apparently the same sur- 
roundings, should differ so radically in such im- 
portant traits as wariness and capacity to escape 
from foes. Yet the spruce grouse in this respect 
shows the most marked contrast to the blue grouse 
and the ruffed grouse. Of course, all three kinds 
vary greatly in their behavior, accordingly as they 
do or do not live in localities where they have 
been free from man's persecutions. The ruffed 
grouse, a very wary game bird in all old-settled 



The White-Goat 139 

regions, is often absurdly tame in the wilderness; 
and, under persecution, even the spruce grouse 
gains some little wisdom ; but the latter never be- 
comes as wary as the former, and under no cir- 
cumstances is it possible to outwit the ruffed 
grouse by such clumsy means as serve for his 
simple-minded brother. There is a similar differ- 
ence between the sage-fowl and prairie-fowl, in fa- 
vor of the latter. It is odd that the largest and the 
smallest kinds of grouse found in the United States 
should be the tamest ; and also the least savory. 

After tramping all day through the forest, at 
nightfall we camped in its upper edge, just at the 
foot of the steep rock walls of the mountain. We 
chose a sheltered spot, where the small spruce 
grew thick, and there was much dead timber ; and 
as the logs, though long, were of little girth, we 
speedily dragged together a number sufficient to 
keep the fire blazing all night. Having drunk our 
full at a brook we cut two forked willow sticks, and 
then each plucked a grouse, split it, thrust the 
willow-fork into it, and roasted it before the fire. 
Besides this, we had salt and bread; moreover, 
we were hungry and healthily tired ; so the supper 
seemed, and was, delicious. Then we turned up 
the collars of our jackets, and lay down, to pass 
the night in broken slumber; each time the fire 
died down the chill waked us, and we rose to feed 
it with fresh logs. 



HO The Wilderness Hunter 

At dawn we rose, and cooked and ate the two 
remaining grouse. Then we turned our faces 
upwards, and passed a day of severe toil in cHmb- 
ing over the crags. Mountaineering is very hard 
work; and when we got high among the peaks, 
where snow filled the rifts, the thinness of the air 
forced me to stop for breath every few hundred 
yards of the ascent. We found much sign of 
white-goats, but in spite of steady work and in- 
cessant careful scanning of the rocks, we did not 
see our quarry until early in the afternoon. 

We had clambered up one side of a steep saddle 
of naked rock, some of the scarped ledges being 
difficult, and indeed dangerous, of ascent. From 
the top of the saddle a careful scrutiny of the 
neighboring peaks failed to reveal any game, and 
we began to go down the other side. The moun- 
tain fell away in a succession of low cliffs, and we 
had to move with the utmost caution. In letting 
ourselves down from ledge to ledge one would hold 
the guns until the other got safe footing, and then 
pass them down to him. In many places we had 
to work our way along the cracks in the faces of 
the frost-riven rocks. At last, just as we reached 
a little smooth shoulder, my companion said, 
pointing down beneath us: "Look at the white- 
goat!" 

A moment or two passed before I got my eyes on 
it. We were looking down into a basin-like valley, 



The White-Goat 141 

surrounded by high mountain chains. At one end 
of the basin was a low pass, where the ridge was 
cut up with the zigzag trails made by the countless 
herds of game which had travelled it for many 
generations. At the other end was a dark gorge, 
through which a stream foamed. The floor of the 
basin was bright emerald green, dotted with 
darker bands where belts of fir trees grew ; and in 
its middle lay a little lake. 

At last I caught sight of the goat, feeding on a 
terrace rather over a hundred and twenty-five 
yards below me. I promptly fired, but overshot. 
The goat merely gave a few jumps and stopped. 
My second bullet went through its lungs, but fear- 
ful lest it might escape to some inaccessible cleft or 
ledge I fired again, missing; and yet again, break- 
ing its back. Down it went, and the next mo- 
ment began to roll over and over, from ledge to 
ledge. I greatly feared it would break its horns ; 
an annoying and oft-recurring incident of white- 
goat shooting, where the nature of the ground is 
such that the dead quarry often falls hundreds of 
feet, its body being torn to ribbons by the sharp 
crags. However, in this case the goat speedily 
lodged unharmed in a little dwarf evergreen. 

Hardly had I fired my fourth shot when my 
companion again exclaimed: " Look at the white- 
goats ! look at the white-goats ! ' ' Glancing in the 
direction in which he pointed I speedily made out 



142 The Wilderness Hunter 

four more goats standing in a bunch rather less 
than a hundred yards off, to one side of my former 
line of fire. They were all looking up at me. They 
stood on a slab of white rock, with which the color 
of their fleece harmonized well; and their black 
horns, muzzles, eyes, and hoofs looked like dark 
dots on a light-colored surface, so that it took me 
more than one glance to determine what they 
were. White-goat invariably run up hill when 
alarmed, their one idea seeming to be to escape 
danger by getting above it; for their brute foes 
are able to overmatch them on anything like level 
ground, but are helpless against them among 
the crags. Almost as soon as I saw them 
these four started up the mountain, nearly in 
my direction, while I clambered down and across 
to meet them. They halted at the foot of a 
cliff, and I at the top, being unable to see them ; 
but in another moment they came bounding 
and cantering up the sheer rocks, not moving 
quickly, but traversing the most seemingly im- 
possible places by main strength and sure-footed- 
ness. As they broke by me, some thirty yards off, 
I fired two shots at the rearmost, an old buck, 
somewhat smaller than the one I had just killed; 
and he rolled down the mountain dead. Two of 
the others, a yearling and a kid, showed more 
alarm than their elders, and ran off at a brisk pace. 
The remaining one, an old she, went off a hundred 



The White-Goat i43 

yards, and then deliberately stopped and turned 
round to gaze at us for a couple of minutes ! Verily, 
the white-goat is the fool-hen among beasts of the 
chase. 

Having skinned and cut off the heads we walked 
rapidly onwards, slanting down the mountain-side, 
and then over and down the pass of the game 
trails ; for it was growing late, and we wished to 
get well down among the timber before nightfall. 
On the way an eagle came soaring overhead, 
and I shot at it twice without success. Having 
once killed an eagle on the wing with a rifle, I 
always have a lurking hope that sometimes I may 
be able to repeat the feat. I revenged myself for 
the miss by knocking a large blue goshawk out of 
the top of a blasted spruce, where it was sitting in 
lazy confidence, its crop stuffed with rabbit and 
grouse. 

A couple of hours' hard walking brought us 
down to timber; just before dusk we reached a 
favorable camping spot in the forest, beside a 
brook, with plenty of dead trees for the night fire. 
Moreover, the spot fortunately yielded us our sup- 
per, too, in the shape of a flock of young spruce 
grouse, of which we shot off the heads of a couple. 
Immediately afterwards I ought to have procured 
our breakfast, for a cock of the same kind sud- 
denly flew down nearby ; but it was getting dark, 
I missed with the first shot, and with the second 



144 The Wilderness Hunter 

must have merely creased the neck, for though the 
tough old bird dropped, it fluttered and ran ofE 
among the underbrush and escaped. 

We broiled our two grouse before our fire, 
dragged plenty of logs into a heap beside it, and 
then lay down to sleep fitfully, an hour or so at a 
time, throughout the night. We were continually 
wakened by the cold, when we had to rise and feed 
the flames. In the early morning we again 
started, walking for some time along the fresh 
trail made by a large band of elk, cows and calves. 
We thought we knew exactly the trend and outlet 
of the valley in which we were, and that therefore 
we could tell where the camp was ; but, as so often 
happens in the wilderness, we had not reckoned 
aright, having passed over one mountain spur too 
many, and entered the ravines of an entirely dif- 
ferent watercourse-system. In consequence, we 
became entangled in a network of hills and valleys, 
making circle after circle to find our bearings ; and 
we only reached camp after twelve hours' tire- 
some tramp without food. 

On another occasion I shot a white-goat while it 
was in a very curious and characteristic attitude. 
I was hunting, again with an old mountain-man 
as my sole companion, among the high mountains 
of the Kootenai country, near the border of Mon- 
tana and British Columbia. We had left our main 
camp, pitched by the brink of the river, and were 



The White-Goat i45 

struggling wearily on foot through the tangled 
forest and over the precipitous mountains, carry- 
ing on our backs light packs, consisting of a little 
food and two or three indispensable utensils, 
wrapped in our blankets. One day we came to 
the foot of a great chain of bare rocks, and climbed 
laboriously to its crest, up cliff after cliff, some of 
which were almost perpendicular. Swarming 
round certain of the rock shoulders, crossing an 
occasional sheer chasm, and in many places cling- 
ing to steep, smooth walls by but slight holds, we 
reached the top. The climbing at such a height 
was excessively fatiguing; moreover, it was in 
places difficult and even dangerous. Of course, it 
was not to be compared to the ascent of towering, 
glacier-bearing peaks, such as those of the Selkirks 
and Alaska, where climbers must be roped to one 
another and carry ice-axes. 

Once at the top we walked very cautiously, 
being careful not to show ourselves against the sky- 
line, and scanning the mountain-sides through our 
glasses. At last we made out three goats, grazing 
unconcernedly on a narrow grassy terrace, which 
sloped abruptly to the brink of a high precipice. 
They were not very far off, and there was a little 
rock spur above them which offered good cover for 
a stalk ; but we had to crawl so slowly, partly to 
avoid falling, and partly to avoid detaching loose 
rocks, that it was nearly an hour before we got in 



VOL. I. — lO 



14^ The Wilderness Hunter 

a favorable position above them, and some seventy 
yards off. The frost-disintegrated mountains in 
which they Hve are always sending down showers 
of detached stones, so that the goats are not very 
sensitive to this noise; still, they sometimes pay 
instantaneous heed to it, especially if the sound is 
repeated. 

When I peeped over the little ledge of rock, 
shoving my rifle carefully ahead of me, I found 
that the goats had finished feeding and were pre- 
paring to leave the slope. The old billy saw me at 
once, but evidently could not quite make me out. 
Thereupon, gazing intently at me, he rose gravely 
on his haunches, sitting up almost in the attitude 
of a dog when begging. I know no other homed 
animal that ever takes this position. 

As I fired he rolled backwards, slipped down the 
grassy slope, and tumbled over the brink of the 
cliff, while the other two, a she and a kid, after a 
moment's panic-struck pause, and a bewildered 
rush in the wrong direction, made off up a little 
rocky gully, and were out of sight in a moment. 
To my chagrin, when I finally reached the carcass, 
after a tedious and circuitous climb to the foot of 
the cliff, I found both horns broken off. 

It was late in the afternoon, and we clambered 
down to the border of a little marshy alpine lake, 
which we reached in an hour or so. Here we 
made our camp, about sunset, in a grove of stunted 



The White-Goat i47 

spruces, which furnished plenty of dead timber 
for the fire. There were many white-goat trails 
leading to this lake, and from the slide rock round- 
about we heard the shrill whistling of hoary rock- 
woodchucks, and the querulous notes of the little 
conies — two of the sounds most familiar to the 
white-goat hunter. These conies had gathered 
heaps of dried plants, and had stowed them care- 
fully away for winter use in the cracks between the 
rocks. 

While descending the mountain we came on a 
little pack of snow grouse or mountain ptarmigan, 
birds which, save in winter, are always found 
above timber line. They were tame and fearless, 
though hard to make out as they ran among the 
rocks, cackling noisily, with their tails cocked 
aloft; and we had no difficulty in killing four, 
which gave us a good breakfast and supper. Old 
white-goats are intolerably musky in flavor, there 
being a very large musk-pod between the horn and 
ear. The kids are eatable, but of course are rarely 
killed ; the shot being usually taken at the animal 
with best horns— and the shes and young of any 
game should only be killed when there is a real 
necessity. 

T\ese two htints may be taken as .pies of 
rrjst expeditions after white-goat. There are 
places where the goats live in mountains close to 
bodies of water, either ocean fiords or large lakes ; 



148 The Wilderness Hunter 

and in such places canoes can be used, to the 
greatly increased comfort and lessened labor of 
the hunters. In other places, where the moun- 
tains are low and the goats spend all the year in 
the timber, a pack-train can be taken right up to 
the hunting-grounds. But generally one must go 
on foot, carrying everything on one's back, and at 
night lying out in the open or under a brush lean- 
to; meanwhile living on spruce grouse and ptar- 
migan, with an occasional meal of trout, and in 
times of scarcity squirrels, or anything else. Such 
a trip entails severe fatigue and not a little hard- 
ship. The actual hunting, also, implies difficult 
and laborious climbing, for the goats Hve by choice 
among the highest and most inaccessible moun- 
tains; though where they are found, as they 
sometimes are, in comparatively low forest-clad 
ranges, I have occasionally killed them with little 
trouble by lying in wait beside the well-trodden 
game trails they make in the timber. 

In any event the hard work is to get up to the 
grounds where the game is found. Once the ani- 
mals are spied there is but little call for the craft 
of the still-hunter in approaching them. Of all 
American game the white-goat is the least wary 
and most stupid. In places where it is much 
hunted it of course gradually grows wilder and 
becomes difficult to approach and kill ; and much 
of its silly tameness is doubtless due to the in- 



The White-Goat 149 

accessible nature of its haunts, which renders it 
ordinarily free from molestation; but aside from 
this it certainly seems as if it was naturally less 
wary than either deer or mountain sheep. The 
great point is to get above it. All its foes live in 
the valleys, and while it is in the mountains, if 
they strive to approach it at all, they must do so 
from below. It is in consequence always on the 
watch for danger from beneath; but it is easily 
approached from above, and then, as it generally 
tries to escape by rimning up hill, the hunter is 
very apt to get a shot. 

Its chase is thus laborious rather than exciting ; 
and to my mind it is less attractive than is the 
pursuit of most of our other game. Yet it has an 
attraction of its own after all ; while the grandeur 
of the scenery amid which it must be carried on, 
the freedom and hardihood of the life and the 
pleasure of watching the queer habits of the game, 
all combine to add to the hunter's enjoyment. 

White-goats are self-confident, pugnacious be- 
ings. An old billy, if he discovers the presence of 
a foe without being quite sure what it is, often re- 
fuses to take flight, but walks around, stamping, 
and shaking his head. The needle-pointed black 
horns are alike in both sexes, save that the males' 
are a trifle thicker; and they are most effective 
weapons when wielded by the muscular neck of a 
resolute and wicked old goat. They wound Hke 



150 The Wilderness Hunter 

stilettos, and their bearer is in consequence a 
much more formidable foe in a hand-to-hand 
struggle than either a branching-antlered deer or 
a mountain ram, with his great battering head. 
The goat does not butt; he thrusts. If he can 
cover his back by a tree trunk or boulder he can 
stand off most carnivorous animals, no larger than 
he is. 

Though awkward in movement, and lacking all 
semblance of lightness or agility, goats are excel- 
lent climbers. One of their queer traits is their 
way of getting their fore hoofs on a slight ledge, 
and then drawing or lifting their bodies up by 
simple muscular exertion, stretching out their 
elbows, much as a man would. They do a good 
deal of their climbing by strength and command 
over their muscles ; although they are also capable 
of making astonishing bounds. If a cliff surface 
has the least slope, and shows any inequalities or 
roughness whatever, goats can go up and down it 
with ease. With their short, stout legs, and large, 
sharp-edged hoofs they clamber well over ice, 
passing and repassing the mountains at a time 
when no man would so much as crawl over them. 
They bear extreme cold with indifference, but are 
intolerant of much heat ; even when the weather is 
cool they are apt to take their noontide rest in 
caves; I have seen them solemnly retiring, for 
this purpose, to great rents in the rocks at a time 



The White-Goat 151 

when my own teeth chattered because of the icy 
wind. 

They go in small flocks; sometimes in pairs 
or little family parties. After the rut the bucks 
often herd by themselves, or go off alone, while 
the young and the shes keep together throughout 
the winter and the spring. The young are gen- 
erally brought forth above timber line, or at its 
uppermost edge, save, of course, in those places 
where the goats live among mountains wooded to 
the top. Throughout the summer they graze on 
the short mountain plants which in many places 
form regular mats above timber line; the deep 
winter snows drive them low down in the wooded 
valleys, and force them to subsist by browsing. 
They are so strong that they plough their way 
readily through deep drifts; and a flock of goats 
at this season, when their white coat is very long 
and thick, if seen waddling off through the snow, 
have a comical likeness to so many diminutive 
polar bears. Of course they could easily be run 
down in the snow by a man on snow-shoes, in the 
plain; but on a mountain-side there are always 
bare rocks and cliff shoulders, glassy with winter 
ice, which give either goats or sheep an advantage 
over their snowshoe-bearing foes that deer and 
elk lack. Whenever the goats pass the winter in 
woodland they leave plenty of sign in the shape of 
patches of wool clinging to all the sharp twigs and 



152 The Wilderness Hunter 

branches against which they have brushed. In 
the spring they often form the habit of drinking at 
certain low pools, to which they beat deep paths ; 
and at this season, and to a less extent in the sum- 
mer and fall, they are very fond of frequenting 
mineral Hcks. At any such lick the ground is 
tramped bare of vegetation, and is filled with pits 
and hollows, actually dug by the tongues of in- 
numerable generations of animals ; while the game 
paths lead from them in a dozen directions. 

In spite of the white-goat's pugnacity, its clum- 
siness renders it no very difficult prey when taken 
imawares by either wolf or cougar, its two chief 
enemies. They cannot often catch it when it is 
above timber line; but it is always in sore peril 
from them when it ventures into the forest. Bears, 
also, prey upon it in the early spring; and one 
midwinter my friend Willis found a wolverine eat- 
ing a goat which it had killed in a snowdrift at the 
foot of a cliff. The savage little beast growled 
and showed fight when he came near the body. 
Eagles are great enemies of the young kids, as they 
are of the young lambs of the bighorns. 

The white-goat is the only game beast of Amer- 
ica which has not decreased in numbers since the 
arrival of the white man. Although in certain 
localities it is now decreasing, yet, taken as a 
whole, it is probably quite as plentiful now as it 
was fifty years back; for in the early part of the 



The White-Goat i53 

present century there were Indian tribes who 
hunted it perseveringly to make the skins into 
robes, whereas now they get blankets from the 
traders and no longer persecute the goats. The 
early trappers and mountain-men knew but little 
of the animal. Whether they were after beaver, 
or were hunting big game, or were merely ex- 
ploring, they kept to the valleys ; there was no in- 
ducement for them to climb to the tops of the 
mountains; so it resulted that there was no ani- 
mal with which the old hunters were so un- 
familiar as with the white-goat. The professional 
hunters of to-day likewise bother it but little; 
they do not care to undergo severe toil for an ani- 
mal with worthless flesh and a hide of little value — 
for it is only in the late fall and winter that the 
long hair and fine wool give the robe any beauty. 

So the quaint, sturdy, musky beasts, with their 
queer and awkward ways, their boldness and their 
stupidity, with their white coats and big black 
hoofs, black muzzles, and sharp, gently-curved, 
span-long black horns, have held their own well 
among the high mountains that they love. In the 
Rockies and the Coast ranges they aboimd from 
Alaska south to Montana, Idaho, and Washington ; 
and here and there isolated colonies are found 
among the high mountains to the southward, in 
Wyoming, Colorado, even in New Mexico, and, 
strangest of all, in one or two spots among the 



154 The Wilderness Hunter 

barren coast mountains of southern California. 
Long after the elk has followed the buffalo to the 
happy hunting-grounds the white-goat will flourish 
among the towering and glacier-riven peaks, and, 
grown wary with succeeding generations, will fur- 
nish splendid sport to those hunters who are both 
good riflemen and hardy cragsmen. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HUNTING IN THE SELKIRKS ; THE CARIBOU 

IN September, 1888, I was camped on the shores 
of Kootenai Lake, having with me, as com- 
panions, John WilHs and an impassive-look- 
ing Indian named Ammal. Coming across through 
the dense coniferous forests of northern Idaho we 
had struck the Kootenai River. Then we went 
down with the current as it wound in half circles 
through a long alluvial valley of mixed marsh and 
woodland, hemmed in by lofty mountains. The 
lake itself, when we reached it, stretched straight 
away like a great fiord, a hundred miles long and 
about three in breadth. The frowning and rugged 
Selkirks came down sheer to the water's edge. So 
straight were the rock walls that it was difficult 
for us to land with our batteau, save at the places 
where the rapid mountain torrents entered the 
lake. As these streams of swift water broke from 
their narrow gorges they made little deltas of level 
ground, with beaches of fine white sand ; and the 
stream banks were edged with cottonwood and 
poplar, their shimmering foliage relieving the 
sombre coloring of the evergreen forest. 

155 



156 The Wilderness Hunter 

Close to such a brook, from which we drew 
strings of large silver trout, our tent was pitched, 
just within the forest. From between the trunks 
of two gnarled, wind-beaten trees, a pine and a Cot- 
tonwood, we looked out across the lake. The little 
bay in our front, in which we bathed and swam, 
was sometimes glassily calm; and again heavy 
wind-squalls arose, and the surf beat strongly 
on the beach where our boat was drawn up. Now 
and then great checker-back loons drifted buoy- 
antly by, stopping with bold curiosity to peer at 
the white tent gleaming between the tree-trunks, 
and at the smoke curling above their tops; and 
they called to one another, both at dawn and in 
the daytime, with shrieks of unearthly laughter. 
Troops of noisy, parti-colored Clarke crows circled 
over the tree-tops or hung from among the pine 
cones ; jays and chickadees came round camp, and 
woodpeckers hammered lustily in the dead timber. 
Two or three times parties of Indians passed down 
the lake, in strangely shaped bark canoes, with 
peaked, projecting prows and stems; craft utterly 
unlike the graceful, feather-floating birches so be- 
loved by both the red and the white woodsmen of 
the northeast. Once a couple of white men, in a 
dug-out or pirogue made out of a cottonwood log, 
stopped to get lunch. They were mining pros- 
pectors, French-Canadians by birth, but beaten 
into the usual frontier-mining stamp ; doomed to 



Hunting in the Selkirks 157 

wander their lives long, ever hoping, in the quest 
for metal wealth. 

With these exceptions there was nothing to 
break the silent loneliness of the great lake. 
Shrouded as we were in the dense forest, and at 
the foot of the first steep hills, we could see nothing 
of the country on the side where we were camped ; 
but across the water the immense mountain masses 
stretched away from our vision, range upon range, 
until they turned to a glittering throng of ice- 
peaks and snow-fields, the feeding beds of glaciers. 
Between the lake and the snow range were chains 
of gray rock-peaks, and the mountain-sides and 
valleys were covered by the primeval forest. The 
woods were on fire across the lake from our camp, 
burning steadily. At night the scene was very 
grand, as the fire worked slowly across the moun- 
tain-sides in immense zigzags of quivering red; 
while at times isolated pines of unusual size kin- 
dled, and flamed for hours, like the torches of a 
giant. Finally the smoke grew so thick as to 
screen from our view the grand landscape op- 
posite. 

We had come down from a week's fruitless hunt- 
ing in the mountains ; a week of excessive toil, in 
a country where we saw no game — for in our ig- 
norance we had wasted time, not going straight 
back to the high ranges, from which the game had 
not yet descended. After three or four days of 



158 The Wilderness Hunter 

rest, and of feasting on trout — a welcome relief to 
the monotony of frying-pan bread and coarse 
salt pork — we were ready for another trial; and 
early one morning we made the start. Having to 
pack everything for a fortnight's use on our backs, 
through an excessively rough country, we, of 
course, travelled as light as possible, leaving al- 
most all we had with the tent and boat. Each 
took his own blanket ; and among us we carried a 
frying-pan, a teapot, flour, pork, salt, tea, and 
matches. I also took a jacket, a spare pair of 
socks, some handkerchiefs, and my washing kit. 
Fifty cartridges in my belt completed my outfit. 

We walked in single file, as is necessary in thick 
woods. The white hunter led and I followed, 
each with rifle on shoulder and pack on back, 
Ammal, the Indian, pigeon-toed along behind, 
carrying his pack, not as we did ours, but by help 
of a forehead-band, which he sometimes shifted 
across his breast. The travelling through the 
tangled, brush-choked forest, and along the boul- 
der-strewn and precipitous mountain-sides, was 
inconceivably rough and difficult. In places we 
followed the valley, and when this became im- 
possible we struck across the spurs. Every step 
was severe toil. Now we walked through deep 
moss and rotting mould, every few feet clamber- 
ing over huge trunks ; again we pushed through a 
stiff jungle of bushes and tall, prickly plants — 



Hunting in the Selkirks 159 

called "devil's clubs," — which stung our hands 
and faces. Up the almost perpendicular hill- 
sides we in many places went practically on all 
fours, forcing our way over the rocks and through 
the dense thickets of laurels or young spruce. 
Where there were windfalls or great stretches of 
burnt forest, black and barren wastes, we balanced 
and leaped from log to log, sometimes twenty or 
thirty feet above the ground; and when such a 
stretch was on a steep hillside, and especially if 
the logs were enveloped in a thick second growth 
of small evergreens, the footing was very insecure 
and the danger from a fall considerable. Our 
packs added greatly to our labor, catching on the 
snags and stubs; and where a grove of thick- 
growing young spruces or balsams had been 
burned, the stiff and brittle twigs pricked like so 
much coral. Most difficult of all were the dry 
watercourses, choked with alders, where the in- 
tertwined tangle of tough stems formed an almost 
literally impenetrable barrier to our progress. 
Nearly every movement — leaping, climbing, swing- 
ing one's self up with one's hands, bursting 
through stiff bushes, plunging into and out of 
bogs — was one of strain and exertion ; the fatigue 
was tremendous and steadily continued, so that 
in an hour every particle of clothing I had on was 
wringing wet with sweat. 

At noon we halted beside a little brook for a bite 



i6o The Wilderness Hunter 

of liinch — a chunk of cold frying-pan bread, which 
was all we had. 

While at lunch I made a capture. I was sitting 
on a great stone by the edge of the brook, idly 
gazing at a water-wren which had come up from a 
short flight — I can call it nothing else — under- 
neath the water, and was singing sweetly from a 
spray-splashed log. Suddenly a small animal 
swam across the little pool at my feet. It was less 
in size than a mouse, and as it paddled rapidly 
underneath the water its body seemed flattened 
like a disc, and was spangled with tiny bubbles, 
like specks of silver. It was a water-shrew, a rare 
little beast. I sat motionless and watched both 
the shrew and the water- wren — water-ousel, as it 
should rightly be named. The latter, emboldened 
by my quiet, presently flew by me to a little rapids 
close at hand, lighting on a round stone, and then 
slipping unconcernedly into the swift water. Anon 
he emerged, stood on another stone, and trilled a 
few bars, though it was late in the season for sing- 
ing; and then dove again into the stream. I 
gazed at him eagerly; for this strange, pretty 
water-thrush is to me one of the most attractive 
and interesting birds to be found in the gorges of 
the great Rockies. Its haunts are romantically 
beautiful, for it always dwells beside and in the 
swift-flowing mountain brooks ; it has a singularly 
sweet song ; and its ways render it a marked bird 



Hunting- in the Selkirks i6i 



'& 



at once, for though looking much like a sober- 
colored, ordinary woodland thrush, it spends half 
its time under the water, walking along the bot- 
tom, swimming and diving, and flitting through 
as well as over the cataracts. 

In a minute or two the shrew caught my eye 
again. It got into a little shallow eddy and 
caught a minute fish, which it carried to a half- 
sunken stone and greedily devoured, tugging 
voraciously at it as it held it down with its paws. 
Then its evil genius drove it into a small puddle 
alongside the brook, where I instantly pounced on 
and slew it ; for I knew a friend in the Smithsonian 
at Washington who would have coveted it greatly. 
It was a soft, pretty creature, dark above, snow- 
white below, with a very long tail. I turned the 
skin inside out and put a bent twig in, that it 
might dry ; while Ammal, who had been intensely 
interested in the chase and capture, meditatively 
shook his head and said " wagh," unable to fathom 
the white man's medicine. However, my labor 
came to nought, for that evening I laid the skin 
out on a log, Ammal threw the log into the fire, 
and that was the end of the shrew. 

When this interlude was over we resumed our 
march, toiling silently onwards through the wild 
and rugged country. Towards evening the valley 
widened a little, and we were able to walk in the 
bottoms, which much lightened our labor. The 



VOL. I.— II. 



i62 The Wilderness Hunter 

hunter, for greater ease, had tied the thongs of 
his heavy pack across his breast, so that he could 
not use his rifle ; but my pack was lighter, and I 
carried it in a manner that would not interfere 
with my shooting, lest we should come unawares 
on game. 

It was well that I did so. An hour or two be- 
fore sunset we were travelling, as usual, in Indian 
file, beside the stream, through an open wood of 
great hemlock trees. There was no breeze, and 
we made no sound as we marched, for our feet 
sunk noiselessly into the deep sponge of moss, 
while the incessant dashing of the torrent, churn- 
ing among the stones, would have drowned a far 
louder advance. 

Suddenly the hunter, who was leading, dropped 
down in his tracks, pointing forward; and some 
fifty feet beyond I saw the head and shoulders of 
a bear as he rose to make a sweep at some berries. 
He was in a hollow where a tall, rank, prickly 
plant, with broad leaves, grew luxuriantly; and 
he was gathering its red berries, rising on his hind 
legs and sweeping them down into his mouth with 
his paw, and was much too intent on his work to 
notice us, for his head was pointed the other way. 
The moment he rose again I fired, meaning to 
shoot through the shoulders, but instead, in the 
hurry, taking him in the neck. Down he went, 
but whether hurt or not we could not see, for the 



Ifig ■ Xiwit,>ijj>-i?'_f,.';5iicx5it»j*«ai 



Black Bear Hunting. 



i:^nwM«£nilMu^'i' -r'^MrihtimAitei--. 



Hunting in the Selkirks 163 

second he was on all fours he was no longer visible. 
Rather to my surprise he uttered no sound — for 
bear when hit or when charging often make a great 
noise — so I raced forward to the edge of the hollow, 
the hunter close behind me, while Ammal danced 
about in the rear, very much excited, as Indians 
always are in the presence of big game. The in- 
stant we reached the hollow and looked down into 
it from the low bank on which we stood we saw by 
the swaying of the tall plants that the bear was 
coming our way. The hunter was standing some 
ten feet distant, a hemlock trunk being between 
us; and the next moment the bear sprang clean 
up the bank the other side of the hemlock, and 
almost within arm's length of my companion. I 
do not think he had intended to charge ; he was 
probably confused by the bullet through his neck, 
and had by chance blundered out of the hollow in 
our direction; but when he saw the hunter so 
close he turned for him, his hair bristling and his 
teeth showing. The man had no cartridge in his 
weapon, and with his pack on could not have 
used it anyhow ; and for a moment it looked as if 
he stood a fair chance of being hurt, though it is 
not likely that the bear would have done more 
than knock him down with his powerful fore paw, 
or perchance give him a single bite in passing. 
However, as the beast sprang out of the hollow 
he poised for a second on the edge of the bank to 



i64 The Wilderness Hunter 

recover his balance, giving me a beautiful shot, as 
he stood sideways to me; the bullet struck be- 
tween the eye and ear, and he fell as if hit with a 
pole-axe. 

Immediately the Indian began jumping about 
the body, uttering wild yells, his usually impas- 
sive face lit up with excitement, while the hunter 
and I stood at rest, leaning on our rifles, and 
laughing. It was a strange scene, the dead bear 
lying in the shade of the giant hemlocks, while 
the fantastic-looking savage danced round him 
with shrill whoops, and the tall frontiersman 
looked quietly on. 

Our prize was a large black bear, with two curi- 
ous brown streaks down his back, one on each side 
the spine. We skinned him and camped by the 
carcass, as it was growing late. To take the chill 
off the evening air we built a huge fire, the logs 
roaring and crackling. To one side of it we made 
our beds — of balsam and hemlock boughs; we 
did not build a brush lean-to, because the night 
seemed likely to be clear. Then we supped on 
sugarless tea, frying-pan bread, and quantities of 
bear meat, fried or roasted — and how very good 
it tasted only those know who have gone through 
much hardship and some little hunger, and have 
worked violently for several days without flesh 
food. After eating our fill we stretched ourselves 
around the fire ; the leaping sheets of flame lit the 



The Caribou 165 

tree-trunks round about, causing them to start 
out against the cavernous blackness beyond, and 
reddened the interlacing branches that formed a 
canopy overhead. The Indian sat on his haunches 
gazing steadily and silently into the pile of blazing 
logs, while the white hunter and I talked together. 

The morning after killing Bruin, we again took 
up our march, heading up stream, that we might 
go to its sources amidst the mountains, where the 
snow-fields fed its springs. It was two full days' 
journey thither, but we took much longer to make 
it, as we kept halting to hunt the adjoining moun- 
tains. On such occasions Ammal was left as camp 
guard, while the white hunter and I would start 
by daybreak and return at dark utterly worn out 
by the excessive fatigue. We knew nothing of 
caribou, nor where to hunt for them ; and we had 
been told that thus early in the season they were 
above tree limit on the mountain-sides. Accord- 
ingly we would climb up to the limits of the for- 
ests, but never found a caribou trail ; and once or 
twice we went on to the summits of the crag-peaks, 
and across the deep snow-fields in the passes. 
There were plenty of white-goats, however, their 
trails being broad paths, especially at one spot 
where they led down to a lick in the valley ; round 
the lick, for a space of many yards, the ground 
was trampled as if in a sheepfold. 

The mountains were very steep, and the climbing 



1 66 The Wilderness Hunter 

was in places dangerous, when we were above 
the timber and had to make our way along the 
jagged knife-crests and across the faces of the 
cliffs ; while our hearts beat as if about to burst in 
the high, thin air. In walking over rough but not 
dangerous ground — across slides or in thick tim- 
ber — my companion was far more skilful than I 
was; but rather to my surprise I proved to be 
nearly as good as he when we came to the really 
dangerous places, where we had to go slowly, and 
let one another down from ledge to ledge, or crawl 
by narrow cracks across the rock walls. 

The view from the summits was magnificent, 
and I never tired of gazing at it. Sometimes the 
sky was a dome of blue crystal, and mountain, 
lake, and valley lay spread in startling clearness 
at our very feet ; and again snow-peak and rock- 
peak were thrust up like islands through a sea of 
billowy clouds. At the feet of the topmost peaks, 
just above the edge of the forest, were marshy al- 
pine valleys, the boggy ground soaked with water, 
and small bushes or stunted trees fringing the icy 
lakes. In the stony mountain-sides surrounding 
these lakes there were hoary woodchucks, and 
conies. The former resembled in their habits the 
alpine marmot, rather than our own common east- 
em woodchuck. They lived alone or in couples 
among the rocks, their gray color often making 
them difficult to see as they crouched at the 



The Caribou 167 

mouths of their burrows, or sat bolt upright ; and 
as an alarm note they uttered a loud piercing 
whistle, a strong contrast to the querulous, plain- 
tive "p-a-a-y" of the timid conies. These like- 
wise loved to dwell where the stones and slabs of 
rock were heaped on one another ; though so timid, 
they were not nearly as wary as the woodchucks. 
If we stood quite still the little brown creatures 
would venture away from their holes and hop 
softly over the rocks as if we were not present. 

The white-goats were too musky to eat, and we 
saw nothing else to shoot ; so we speedily became 
reduced to tea, and to bread baked in the frying- 
pan, save every now and then for a feast on 
the luscious mountain blueberries. This rather 
meagre diet, coupled with incessant fatigue and 
exertion, made us fairly long for meat food; and 
we fell off in flesh, though of course in so short a 
time we did not suffer in either health or strength. 
Fortunately, the nights were too cool for mos- 
quitoes ; but once or twice in the afternoons, while 
descending the lower slopes of the mountains, we 
were much bothered by swarms of gnats; they 
worried us greatly, usually attacking us at a time 
when we had to go fast in order to reach camp be- 
fore dark, while the roughness of the ground 
forced us to use both hands in climbing, and thus 
forbade us to shield our faces from our tiny tor- 
mentors. Our chief luxury was, at the end of the 



i68 The Wilderness Hunter 

day, when footsore and weary, to cast aside our 
sweat-drenched clothes and plunge into the icy 
mountain torrent for a moment's bath that fresh- 
ened us as if by magic. The nights were generally 
pleasant, and we slept soundly on our beds of 
balsam boughs, but once or twice there were 
sharp frosts, and it was so cold that the hunter and 
I huddled together for warmth, and kept the fires 
going till morning. One day, when we were on 
the march, it rained heavily, and we were soaked 
through and stiff and chilly when we pitched 
camp ; but we speedily built a great brush lean-to, 
made a roaring fire in front, and grew once more 
to warmth and comfort as we sat under our steam- 
ing shelter. The only discomfort we really minded 
was an occasional night in wet blankets. 

In the evening the Indian and the white hunter 
played interminable games of seven-up with a 
greasy pack of cards. In the course of his varied 
life the hunter had been a professional gambler; 
and he could have easily won all the Indian's 
money, the more speedily inasmuch as the un- 
tutored red man was always attempting to cheat, 
and was thus giving his far more skilful opponent 
a certain right to try some similar deviltry in re- 
turn. However, it was distinctly understood that 
there should be no gambling, for I did not wish 
Ammdl to lose all his wages while in my employ ; 
and the white man stood loyally by his agreement. 



The Caribou 169 

Amm^l's people, just before I engaged him, had 
been visited by their brethren, the Upper Koote- 
nais, and in a series of gambhng matches had lost 
about all their belongings. 

Ammal himself was one of the Lower Kootenais ; 
I had hired him for the trip, as the Indians west of 
the Rockies, unlike their kinsmen of the plains, 
often prove hard and willing workers. His know- 
ledge of English was almost nil; and our very 
scanty conversation was carried on in the Chinook 
jargon, universally employed between the moun- 
tains and the Pacific. Apparently, he had three 
names : for he assured us that his " Boston" {i. e., 
American) name was Ammal; his " Siwash" {i. e., 
Indian) name was Appak; and that the priest 
called him Abel — for the Lower Kootenais are 
nominally Catholics. Whatever his name he was 
a good Indian, as Indians go. I often tried to 
talk with him about game and hunting, but we 
understood each other too little to exchange more 
than the most rudimentary ideas. His face bright- 
ened one night when I happened to tell him of my 
baby boys at home ; he must have been an affec- 
tionate father in his way, this dark Ammal, for he 
at once proceeded to tell me about his own pa- 
poose, who had also seen one snow, and to de- 
scribe how the little fellow was old enough to take 
one step and then fall down. But he never dis- 
played so much vivacity as on one occasion when 



170 The Wilderness Hunter 

the white hunter happened to relate to him a 
rather gruesome feat of one of their mutual ac- 
quaintances, an Upper Kootenai Indian named 
Three Coyotes. The latter was a quarrelsome, ad- 
venturous Indian, with whom the hunter had once 
had a difficulty — " I had to beat the cuss over the 
head with my gun a little," he remarked, paren- 
thetically. His last feat had been done in connec- 
tion with a number of Chinamen, who had been 
working among some placer mines, where the In- 
dians came to visit them. Now the astute Chinese 
are as fond of gambling as any of the borderers, 
white or red, and are very successful, generally 
fleecing the Indians unmercifully. Three Coyotes 
lost aU he possessed to one of the pig-tailed gentry ; 
but he apparently took his losses philosophically, 
and pleasantly followed the victor round, until the 
latter had won all the cash and goods of several 
other Indians. Then he suddenly fell on the exile 
from the Celestial Empire, slew him, and took all 
his plunder, retiring unmolested, as it did not 
seem any one's business to avenge a mere China- 
man. Ammal was immensely interested in the 
tale, and kept recurring to it again and again, 
taking two little sticks and making the hunter act 
out the whole story. The Kootenais were then 
only just beginning to consider the Chinese as 
human. They knew they must not kill white 
people, and they had their own code of morality 



The Caribou 171 

among themselves; but when the Chinese first 
appeared they evidently thought that there could 
not be any especial objection to killing them, if 
any reason arose for doing so. I think the hunter 
himself sympathized somewhat with this view. 

Ammdl objected strongly to leaving the neigh- 
borhood of the lake. He went the first day's 
journey willingly enough, but after that it was in- 
creasingly difficult to get him along, and he gradu- 
ally grew sulky. For some time we could not find 
out the reason; but finally he gave us to under- 
stand that he was afraid because up in the high 
mountains there were "little bad Indians" who 
would kill him if they caught him alone, especially 
at night. At first we thought he was speaking of 
stray warriors of the Blackfeet tribe ; but it turned 
out that he was not thinking of human beings at 
all, but of hobgoblins. 

Indeed the night sounds of these great stretches 
of mountain woodland were very weird and 
strange. Though I have often and for long periods 
dwelt and hunted in the wilderness, yet I never 
before so well understood why the people who live 
in lonely forest regions are prone to believe in 
elves, wood spirits, and other beings of an unseen 
world. Our last camp, whereat we spent several 
days, was pitched in a deep valley nearly at the 
head of the stream. Our brush shelter stood 
among the tall coniferous trees that covered the 



172 The Wilderness Hunter 

valley bottom ; but the altitude was so great that 
the forest extended only a very short distance up 
the steep mountain slopes. Beyond, on either 
hand, rose walls of gray rock, with snow-beds in 
their rifts, and, high above, toward the snow-peaks, 
the great white fields dazzled the eyes. The tor- 
rent foamed swiftly by but a short distance be- 
low the mossy level space on which we had built 
our slight weather-shield of pine boughs ; other 
streams poured into it, from ravines through which 
they leaped down the mountain-sides. 

After nightfall, round the camp-fire, or if I 
awakened after sleeping a little while, I would 
often lie silently for many minutes together, lis- 
tening to the noises of the wilderness. At times 
the wind moaned harshly through the tops of the 
tall pines and hemlocks; at times the branches 
were still; but the splashing murmur of the tor- 
rent never ceased, and through it came other 
sounds — the clatter of huge rocks falling down the 
cliffs, the dashing of cataracts in far-off ravines, 
the hooting of owls. Again, the breeze would 
shift, and bring to my ears the ringing of other 
brooks and cataracts and wind-stirred forests, and 
perhaps at long intervals the cry of some wild 
beast, the crashing of a falling tree, or the faint 
rumble of a snow avalanche. If I listened long 
enough, it would almost seem that I heard thun- 
derous voices laughing and calling to one another, 



The Caribou 173 

and as if at any moment some shape might stalk 
out of the darkness into the dim Hght of the 
embers. 

Until within a couple of days of turning our 
faces back towards the lake we did not come 
across any caribou, and saw but a few old signs; 
and we began to be fearful lest we should have to 
return without getting any, for our shoes had been 
cut to ribbons by the sharp rocks, we were almost 
out of flour, and therefore had but little to eat. 
However, our perseverance was destined to be 
rewarded. 

The first day after reaching our final camp, we 
hunted across a set of spurs and hollows, but saw 
nothing living; yet we came across several bear- 
tracks, and in a deep, mossy quagmire, by a spring, 
found where a huge silver-tip had wallowed only 
the night before. 

Next day we started early, determined to take a 
long walk and follow the main stream up to its 
head, or at least above timber line. The hunter 
struck so brisk a pace, plunging through thickets 
and leaping from log to log in the slashes of fallen 
timber, and from boulder to boulder in crossing 
the rock-slides, that I could hardly keep up to him, 
struggle as I would, and we each of us got several 
ugly tumbles, saving our rifles at the expense of 
scraped hands and bruised bodies. We went up 
one side of the stream, intending to come down 



174 The Wilderness Hunter 

the other; for the forest belt was narrow enough 
to hunt thoroughly. For two or three hours we 
toiled through dense growth, varied by rock- 
slides, and once or twice by marshy tracts, where 
water oozed and soaked through the mossy hill- 
sides, studded rather sparsely with evergreens. 
In one of these places we caught a glimpse of 
an animal which the track showed to be a wol- 
verine. 

Then we came to a spur of open hemlock forest ; 
and no sooner had we entered it than the hunter 
stopped and pointed exultingly to a well-marked 
game trail, in which it was easy at a glance to dis- 
cern the great round footprints of our quarry. We 
hunted carefully over the spur and found several 
trails, generally leading down along the ridge ; we 
also found a number of beds, some old and some 
recent, usually placed where the animal could 
keep a lookout for any foe coming up from the 
valley. They were merely slight hollows or in- 
dentations in the pine-needles ; arid, like the game 
trails, were placed in localities similar to those 
that would be chosen by blacktail deer. The 
caribou droppings were also very plentiful; and 
there were signs of where they had browsed on the 
blueberry bushes, cropping off the berries, and 
also apparently of where they had here and there 
plucked a mouthful of a peculiar kind of moss, or 
cropped off some little mushrooms. But the 



The Caribou 175 

beasts themselves had evidently left the hemlock 
ridge, and we went on. 

We were much pleased at finding the sign in 
open timber, where the ground was excellent for 
still-hunting; for in such thick forest as we had 
passed through, it would have been by mere luck 
only that we could have approached game. 

After a little while the valley became so high 
that the large timber ceased, and there were only 
occasional groves of spindling evergreens. Be- 
yond the edge of the big timber was a large boggy 
tract, studded with little pools ; and here again we 
found plenty of caribou tracks. A caribou has 
an enormous foot, bigger than a cow's, and ad- 
mirably adapted for travelling over snow or bogs ; 
hence they can pass through places where the long 
slender hoofs of moose or deer, or the rounded 
hoofs of elk, would let their owners sink at once ; 
and they are very difficult to kill by following on 
snow-shoes — a method much in vogue among the 
brutal game butchers for slaughtering the more 
helpless animals. Spreading out his great hoofs, 
and bending his legs till he walks almost on the 
joints, a caribou will travel swiftly over a crust 
through which a moose breaks at every stride, or 
through deep snow in which a deer cannot flounder 
fifty yards. Usually he trots ; but when pressed 
he will spring awkwardly along, leaving tracks in 
the snow almost exactly like magnified imprints of 



17^ The Wilderness Hunter 

those of a great rabbit, the long marks of the two 
hind legs forming an angle with each other, while 
the fore feet make a large point almost between. 

The caribou had wandered all over the bogs and 
through the shallow pools, but evidently only at 
night or in the dusk, when feeding or in coming to 
drink; and we again went on. Soon the timber 
disappeared almost entirely, and thick brushwood 
took its place ; we were in a high, bare alpine val- 
ley, the snow lying in drifts along the sides. In 
places there had been enormous rock-slides, en- 
tirely filling up the bottom, so that for a quarter 
of a mile at a stretch the stream ran underground. 
In the rock masses of this alpine valley we, as 
usual, saw many conies and hoary woodchucks. 

The caribou trails had ceased, and it was evi- 
dent that the beasts were not ahead of us in the 
barren, treeless recesses between the mountains 
of rock and snow ; and we turned back down the 
valley, crossing over to the opposite or south side 
of the stream. We had already eaten our scanty 
lunch, for it was afternoon. For several miles of 
hard walking, through thicket, marsh, and rock- 
slide, we saw no traces of the game. Then we 
reached the forest, which soon widened out, and 
crept up the mountain-sides; and we came to 
where another stream entered the one we were 
following. A high, steep shoulder between the 
two valleys was covered with an open growth of 



The Caribou 177 

great hemlock timber, and in this we again found 
the trails and beds plentiful. There was no 
breeze, and after beating through the forest nearly 
to its upper edge, we began to go down the ridge, 
or point of the shoulder. The comparative free- 
dom from brushwood made it easy to walk with- 
out noise, and we descended the steep incline with 
the utmost care, scanning every object, and using 
every caution not to slip on the hemlock needles 
nor to strike a stone or break a stick with our feet. 
The sign was very fresh, and when still half a mile 
or so from the bottom we at last came on three 
bull caribou. 

Instantly the hunter crouched down, while I 
ran noiselessly forward behind the shelter of a big 
hemlock trunk until within fifty yards of the graz- 
ing and unconscious quarry. They were feeding 
with their heads up hill, but so greedily that they 
had not seen us ; and they were rather difficult to 
see themselves, for their bodies harmonized well in 
color with the brown tree-trunks and lichen-cov- 
ered boulders. The largest, a big bull with a good 
but by no means extraordinary head, was nearest. 
As he stood fronting me with his head down I fired 
into his neck, breaking the bone, and he turned 
a tremendous back somersault. The other two 
halted a second in stunned terror; then one, a 
yearling, rushed past us up the valley down which 
we had come, while the other, a large bull with 



VOL. I. — 12. 



17S The Wilderness Hunter 

small antlers, crossed right in front of me, at a 
canter, his neck thrust out, and his head — so 
coarse-looking compared to the delicate outlines 
of an elk's — turned towards me. His movements 
seemed clumsy and awkward, utterly unlike those 
of a deer ; but he handled his great hoofs cleverly 
enough, and broke into a headlong, rattling gallop 
as he went down the hillside, crashing through the 
saplings and leaping over the fallen logs. There 
was a spur a little beyond, and up this he went at 
a swinging trot, halting when he reached the top, 
and turning to look at me once more. He was 
only a hundred yards away ; and though I had not 
intended to shoot him (for his head was not good), 
the temptation was sore ; and I was glad when, in 
another second, the stupid beast turned again and 
went off up the valley at a slashing rim. 

Then we hurried down to examine with pride 
and pleasure the dead bull — his massive form, 
sleek coat, and fine antlers. It was one of those 
moments that repay the hunter for days of toil and 
hardship ; that is, if he needs repayment, and does 
not find life in the wilderness pleasure enough in 
itself. 

It was getting late, and if we expected to reach 
camp that night it behooved us not to delay; so 
we merely halted long enough to dress the caribou, 
and take a steak with us — which we did not need, 
by the way, for almost immediately we came on a 



The Caribou 179 

band of spruce grouse, and knocked off the heads 
of five with our rifles. The caribou's stomach was 
filled with blueberries, and with their leaves, and 
with a few small mushrooms also, and some 
mouthfuls of moss. We went home very fast, too 
much elated to heed scratches and tumbles ; and 
just as it was growing so dark that further travel- 
ling was impossible we came opposite our camp, 
crossed the river on a fallen hemlock, and walked 
up to the moody Indian, as he sat crouched by 
the fire. 

He lost his sullenness when he heard what we 
had done; and next day we all went up and 
skinned and butchered the caribou, returning to 
camp and making ready to start back to the lake 
the following morning ; and that night we feasted 
royally. 

We were off by dawn, the Indian joyfully lead- 
ing. Coming up into the mountains he had always 
been the rear man of the file ; but now he went first 
and struck a pace that, continued all day long, gave 
me a little trouble to follow . Each of us carried his 
pack ; to the Indian's share fell the caribou skull 
and antlers, which he bore on his head. At the 
end of the day he confessed to me that it had made 
his head "heap sick" — as well it might. We had 
made four short days', or parts of days', march 
coming up; for we had stopped to hunt, and 
moreover we knew nothing of the country, 



i8o The Wilderness Hunter 

being probably the first white men in it, while 
none of the Indians had ever ventured a long dis- 
tance from the lake. Returning, we knew how to 
take the shortest route, we were going down hill, 
and we walked or trotted very fast; and so we 
made the whole distance in twelve hours' travel. 
At sunset we came out on the last range of steep 
foothills, overlooking the cove where we had 
pitched our permanent camp; and from a bare 
cliff shoulder we saw our boat on the beach, and 
our white tent among the trees, just as we had left 
them, while the glassy mirror of the lake reflected 
the outlines of the mountains opposite. 

Though this was the first caribou I had ever 
killed, it was by no means the first I had ever 
hunted. Among my earliest himting experiences, 
when a lad, were two fruitless and toilsome expedi- 
tions after caribou in the Maine woods. One I 
made in the fall, going to the head of the Mun- 
sungin River in a pirogue, with one companion. 
The water was low, and all the way up we had to 
drag the pirogue, wet to our middles, our ankles 
sore from slipping on the round stones under the 
rushing water, and our muscles aching with fatigue 
When we reached the head-waters we found no 
caribou sign, and came back without slaying any- 
thing larger than an infrequent duck or grouse. 

The following February I made a trip on snow- 
shoes after the same game, and with the same 



The Caribou i8i 

result. However, I enjoyed the trip, for the north- 
land woods are very beautiful and strange in win- 
ter, as indeed they are at all other times — and 
it was my first experience on snow-shoes. I used 
the ordinary webbed racquets, and as the snow, 
though very deep, was only imperfectly crusted, I 
found that for a beginner the exercise was labor- 
ious in the extreme, speedily discovering that, no 
matter how cold it was, while walking through the 
windless woods I stood in no need of warm clothing. 
But at night, especially when lying out, the cold 
was bitter. Our plan was to drive in a sleigh to 
some logging camp, where we were always re- 
ceived with hearty hospitality, and thence make 
himting trips, in very light marching order, 
through the heart of the surrounding forest. The 
woods, wrapped in their heavy white mantle, were 
still and lifeless. There were a few chickadees and 
woodpeckers ; now and then we saw flocks of red- 
polls, pine linnets, and large, rosy grosbeaks ; and 
once or twice I came across a grouse or white rab- 
bit and killed it for supper; but this was nearly 
all. Yet, though bird life was scarce, and though 
we saw few beasts beyond an occasional porcupine 
or squirrel, every morning the snow was dotted 
with a network of trails made during the hours of 
darkness ; the fine tracery of the footprints of the 
little red wood-mouse, the marks which showed 
the loping progress of the sable, the V and dot of 



1 82 The Wilderness Hunter 

the rabbit, the round pads of the lucivee, and 
many others. The snow reveals, as nothing else 
does, the presence in the forest of the many shy 
woodland creatures which lead their lives abroad 
only after nightfall. Once we saw a coon, out 
early after its winter nap, and following I shot it 
in a hollow tree. Another time we came on a 
deer, and the frightened beast left its "yard," a 
tangle of beaten paths, or deep furrows. The poor 
animal made but slow headway through the pow- 
dery snow ; after going thirty or forty rods it sank 
exhausted in a deep drift, and lay there in helpless 
panic as we walked close by. Very different were 
the actions of the only caribou we saw — a fine 
beast which had shed its antlers. I merely caught 
a glimpse of it as it leaped over a breastwork of 
down timbers ; and we never saw it again. Alter- 
nately trotting and making a succession of long 
jumps, it speedily left us far behind ; with its great 
splay-hoofs it could snow-shoe better than we 
could. It is among deer the true denizen of the 
regions of heavy snowfall; far more so than the 
moose. Only under exceptional conditions of 
crust-formation is it in any danger from a man on 
snow-shoes. 

In other ways it is no better able to take care of 
itself than moose and deer ; in fact, I doubt whether 
its senses are quite as acute, or at least whether it 
is as wary and knowing, for under like conditions 



The Caribou 183 

it is rather easier to still-hunt. In the fall caribou 
wander long distances, and are fond of frequenting 
the wet barrens, which break the expanse of the 
northern forest in tracts of ever-increasing size as 
the subarctic regions are neared. At this time 
they go in bands, each under the control of a mas- 
ter bull, which wages repeated and furious battles 
for his harem; and in their ways of life they re- 
semble the wapiti more than they do the moose or 
deer. They sometimes display a curious bold- 
ness, the bulls especially showing both stupidity 
and pugnacity when in districts to which men 
rarely penetrate. 

On our way out of the woods, after this hunt, 
there was a slight warm spell, followed by rain and 
then by freezing weather, so as to bring about 
what is known as a silver thaw. Every twig was 
sheathed in glittering ice, and in the moonlight the 
forest gleamed as if carved out of frosted silver. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 

ONCE, while on another hiint with John Wil- 
hs, I spent a week in a vain effort to kill 
moose among the outlying mountains at 
the southern end of the Bitter Root range. Then, 
as we had no meat, we determined to try for elk, 
of which we had seen much sign. 

We here camped with a wagon, as high among 
the foothills as wheels could go, but several hours' 
walk from the range of the game ; for it was still 
early in the season, and they had not yet come 
down from the upper slopes. Accordingly we 
made a practice of leaving the wagon for two or 
three days at a time to hunt ; returning to get a 
night's rest in the tent, preparatory to a fresh 
start. On these trips we carried neither blan- 
kets nor packs, as the walking was difficult and we 
had much ground to cover. Each merely put on 
his jacket, with a loaf of frying-pan bread and a 
paper of salt stuffed into the pockets. We were 
cumbered with nothing save our rifles and cart- 
ridges. 

184 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 185 

On the morning in question we left camp at 
sunrise. For two or three hours we walked up 
hill through a rather open growth of small pines 
and spruces, the travelling being easy. Then we 
came to the edge of a deep valley, a couple of 
miles across. Into this we scrambled, down a 
steep slide, where the forest had grown up among 
the immense boulder masses. The going here was 
difficult to a degree ; the great rocks, dead timber, 
slippery pine needles, and loose gravel entailing 
caution at every step, while we had to guard our 
rifles carefully from the consequences of a slip. It 
was not much better at the bottom, which was 
covered by a tangled mass of swampy forest. 
Through this we hunted carefully, but with no 
success, in spite of our toil; for the only tracks 
we saw that were at all fresh were those of a cow 
and calf moose. Finally, in the afternoon, we left 
the valley and began to climb a steep gorge, down 
which a mountain torrent roared and foamed in a 
succession of cataracts. 

Three hours' hard climbing brought us to an- 
other valley, but of an entirely different character. 
It was several miles long, but less than a mile 
broad. Save at the mouth, it was walled in com- 
pletely by chains of high rock-peaks, their sum- 
mits snow-capped; the forest extended a short 
distance up their sides. The bottom of the val- 
ley was in places covered by open woodland, 



1 86 The Wilderness Hunter 

elsewhere by marshy meadows, dotted with dense 
groves of spruce. 

Hardly had we entered this valley before we 
caught a glimpse of a yearling elk walking rapidly 
along a game path some distance ahead. We fol- 
lowed as quickly as we could without making a 
noise, but after the first glimpse never saw it 
again ; for it is astonishing how fast an elk travels, 
with its ground-covering walk. We went up the 
valley until we were well past its middle, and saw 
* abundance of fresh elk sign. Evidently two or 
three bands had made the neighborhood their 
headquarters. Among them were some large 
bulls, which had been trying their horns not only 
on the quaking-asp and willow saplings, but also 
on one another, though the rut had barely begun. 
By one pool they had scooped out a kind of wal- 
low or bare spot in the grass, and had torn and 
tramped the ground with their hoofs. The place 
smelt strongly of their urine. 

By the time the sun set we were sure the elk 
were towards the head of the valley. We utilized 
the short twilight in arranging our sleeping-place 
for the night, choosing a thick grove of spruce be- 
side a small mountain tarn, at the foot of a great 
cliff. We were chiefly influenced in our choice by 
the abundance of dead timber of a size easy to 
handle; the fuel question being all-important on 
such a trip, where one has to He out without bed- 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 187 

ding, and to keep up a fire, with no axe to cut 
wood. 

Having selected a smooth spot, where some 
low-growing firs made a wind-break, we dragged 
up enough logs to feed the fire throughout the 
night. Then we drank our fill at the icy pool, and 
ate a few mouthfuls of bread. While it was still 
light we heard the querulous bleat of the conies, 
from among the slide rocks at the foot of the 
mountain; and the chipmunks and chickarees 
scolded at us. As dark came on, and we sat 
silently gazing into the flickering blaze, the owls 
began muttering and hooting. 

Clearing the ground of stones and sticks, we lay 
down beside the fire, pulled our soft felt hats over 
our ears, buttoned our jackets, and went to sleep. 
Of course, our slumbers were fitful and broken, for 
every hour or two the fire got low and had to be 
replenished. We wakened shivering out of each 
spell of restless sleep to find the logs smouldering ; 
we were alternately scorched and frozen. 

As the first faint streak of dawn appeared in the 
dark sky my companion touched me lightly on the 
arm. The fire was nearly out ; we felt numbed by 
the chill air. At once we sprang up, stretched 
our arms, shook ourselves, examined our rifles, 
swallowed a mouthful or two of bread, and walked 
off through the gloomy forest. 

At first we could scarcely see our way, but it 



1 88 The Wilderness Hunter 

grew rapidly lighter. The gray mist rose and 
wavered over the pools and wet places ; the morn- 
ing voices of the wilderness began to break the 
death-like stillness. After we had walked a couple 
of miles the mountain tops on our right hand 
reddened in the sun-rays. 

Then, as we trod noiselessly over the dense 
moss, and on the pine needles under the scattered 
trees, we heard a sharp clang and clatter up the 
valley ahead of us. We knew this meant game of 
some sort ; and stealing lightly and cautiously for- 
ward we soon saw before us the cause of the noise. 

In a little glade, a hundred and twenty-five 
yards from us, two bull elk were engaged in deadly 
combat, while two others were looking on. It was 
a splendid sight. The great beasts faced each 
other with lowered horns, the manes that covered 
their thick necks and the hair on their shoulders 
bristling and erect. Then they charged furiously, 
the crash of the meeting antlers resounding through 
the valley. The shock threw them both on their 
haunches; with locked horns and glaring eyes 
they strove against each other, getting their hind 
legs well under them, straining every muscle in 
their huge bodies, and squealing savagely. They 
were evenly matched in weight, strength, and 
courage ; and push as they might, neither got the 
upper hand, first one yielding a few inches, then 
the other, while they swayed to and fro in their 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 189 

struggles, smashing the bushes and ploughing up 
the soil. 

Finally they separated and stood some little 
distance apart, under the great pines, their sides 
heaving, and columns of steam rising from their 
nostrils through the frosty air of the brightening 
morning. Again they rushed together with a 
crash, and each strove mightily to overthrow the 
other, or get past his guard; but the branching 
antlers caught every vicious lunge and thrust. 
This set-to was stopped rather curiously. One of 
the onlooking elk was a yearling; the other, 
though scarcely as heavy-bodied as either of the 
fighters, had a finer head. He was evidently much 
excited by the battle, and he now began to walk 
towards the two combatants, nodding his head 
and uttering a queer, whistling noise. They dared 
not leave their flanks uncovered to his assault; 
and as he approached they promptly separated, 
and walked off side by side a few yards apart. In 
a moment, however, one spun round and jumped 
at his old adversary, seeking to stab him in 
his unprotected flank; but the latter was just 
as quick, and as before caught the rush on his 
horns. They closed as furiously as ever; but 
the utmost either could do was to inflict one or 
two punches on the neck and shoulders of his 
foe, where the thick hide served as a shield. 
Again the peacemaker approached, nodding his 



190 The Wilderness Hunter 

head, whistling, and threatening ; and again they 
separated. 

This was repeated once or twice; and I began 
to be afraid lest the breeze which was very light 
and puffy should shift and give them my wind. 
So, resting my rifle on my knee, I fired twice, 
putting one bullet behind the shoulder of the 
peacemaker, and the other behind the shoulder 
of one of the combatants. Both were deadly 
shots, but, as so often with wapiti, neither of the 
wounded animals at the moment showed any 
signs of being hit. The yearling ran off un- 
scathed. The other three crowded together and 
trotted behind some spruce on the left, while we 
ran forward for another shot. In a moment one 
fell; whereupon the remaining two turned and 
came back across the glade, trotting to the right. 
As we opened fire they broke into a lumbering 
gallop, but were both downed before they got out 
of sight in the timber. 

As soon as the three bulls were down we busied 
ourselves taking off their heads and hides, and 
cutting off the best portions of the meat — from 
the saddles and hams — to take back to camp, 
where we smoked it. But first we had breakfast. 
We kindled a fire beside a little spring of clear 
water and raked out the coals. Then we cut two 
willow twigs as spits, ran on each a number of 
small pieces of elk loin, and roasted them over the 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 191 

fire. We had salt ; we were very hungry ; and I 
never ate anything that tasted better. 

The wapiti is, next to the moose, the most 
quarrelsome and pugnacious of American deer. It 
cannot be said that it is ordinarily a dangerous 
beast to hunt; yet there are instances in which 
wounded wapiti, incautiously approached to with- 
in striking distance, have severely misused their 
assailants, both with their antlers and their fore 
feet, I myself knew one man who had been 
badly mauled in this fashion. When tamed the 
bulls are dangerous to human life in the rutting 
season. In a grapple they are of course infinitely 
more to be dreaded than ordinary deer, because of 
their great strength. 

However, the fiercest wapiti bull, when in a 
wild state, flees the neighborhood of man with 
the same panic terror shown by the cows ; and he 
makes no stand against a grisly, though when his 
horns are grown he has little fear of either wolf or 
cougar if on his guard and attacked fairly. The 
chief battles of the bulls are of course waged with 
one another. Before the beginning of the rut they 
keep by themselves: singly, while the sprouting 
horns are still very young, at which time they lie 
in secluded spots and move about as little as pos- 
sible; in large bands, later in the season. At the 
beginning of the fall these bands join with one an- 
other and with the bands of cows and calves, 



192 The Wilderness Hunter 

which have likewise been keeping to themselves 
during the late winter, the spring, and the sum- 
mer. Vast herds are thus sometimes formed, con- 
taining, in the old days when wapiti were plenty, 
thousands of head. The bulls now begin to fight 
furiously with one another, and the great herd 
becomes split into smaller ones. Each of these 
has one master bull, who has won his position by 
savage battle, and keeps it by overcoming every 
rival, whether a solitary bull, or the lord of another 
harem, who challenges him. When not fighting or 
love-making he is kept on the run, chasing away 
the young bulls who venture to pay court to the 
cows. He has hardly time to eat or sleep, and soon 
becomes gaunt and worn to a degree. At the 
close of the rut many of the bulls become so 
emaciated that they retire to some secluded spot 
to recuperate. They are so weak that they readily 
succumb to the elements, or to their brute foes; 
many die from sheer exhaustion. 

The battles between the bulls rarely result 
fatally. After a longer or shorter period of charg- 
ing, pushing, and struggling, the heavier or more 
enduring of the two begins to shove his weaker 
antagonist back and round; and the latter then 
watches his chance and bolts, hotly, but as a rule 
harmlessly, pursued for a few hundred yards. The 
massive branching antlers serve as effective guards 
against the most wicked thrusts. While tlie an- 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 193 

tagonists are head on, the worst that can happen 
is a punch on the shoulder which will not break 
the thick hide, though it may bruise the flesh un- 
derneath. It is only when a beast is caught while 
turning that there is a chance to deliver a possibly 
deadly stab in the flank, with the brow prongs, 
the "dog-killers," as they are called in bucks. 
Sometimes, but rarely, fighting wapiti get their 
antlers interlocked and perish miserably ; my own 
ranch, the Elkhom, was named from finding on 
the spot where the ranch-house now stands two 
splendid pairs of elk antlers thus interlocked. 

Wapiti keep their antlers until the spring, 
whereas deer and moose lose theirs by midwinter. 
The bull's behavior in relation to the cow is merely 
that of a vicious and brutal coward. He bullies 
her continually, and in times of danger his one 
thought is for sneaking off to secure his own 
safety. For all his noble looks he is a very un- 
amiable beast, who behaves with brutal ferocity 
to the weak, and shows abject terror of the strong. 
According to his powers, he is guilty of rape, rob- 
bery, and even murder. I never felt the least 
compunction at shooting a bull, but I hate to 
shoot a cow, even when forced by necessity. 
Maternity must always appeal to any one. A cow 
has more courage than a bull. She will fight val- 
iantly for her young calf, striking such blows with 
her fore feet that most beasts of prey at once slink 

VOL. I. — 13. 



194 The Wilderness Hunter 

away from the combat. Cougars and wolves com- 
mit great ravages among the bands ; but they often 
secure their quarry only at the cost of sharp pre- 
liminary tussles — and in tussles of this kind they 
do not always prove victors or escape scathless. 

During the rut the bulls are very noisy; and 
their notes of amorous challenge are called 
"whistling" by the frontiersmen, — very inappro- 
priately. They begin to whistle about ten days 
before they begin to run ; and they have in addi- 
tion an odd kind of bark, which is only heard oc- 
casionally. The whistling is a most curious, and 
to me a most attractive sound, when heard in the 
great lonely mountains. As with so many other 
things, much depends upon the surroundings. 
When listened to nearby and under imfavorable 
circumstances, the sound resembles a succession 
of hoarse whistling roars, ending with two or three 
gasping grunts. 

But heard at a little distance, and in its proper 
place, the call of the wapiti is one of the grandest 
and most beautiful sounds in nature. Especially 
is this the case when several rivals are answering 
one another, on some frosty moonlight night in 
the mountains. The wild melody rings from 
chasm to chasm under the giant pines, sustained 
and modulated, through bar after bar, filled with 
challenge and proud anger. It thrills the soul of 
the listening hunter. 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 195 

Once, while in the mountains, I listened to a 
peculiarly grand chorus of this kind. We were 
travelling with pack-ponies at the time, and our 
tent was pitched in a grove of yellow pine, by a 
brook in the bottom of a valley. On either hand 
rose the mountains, covered with spruce forest. 
It was in September, and the first snow had just 
fallen. 

The day before we had walked long and hard; 
and during the night I slept the heavy sleep of the 
weary. Early in the morning, just as the east 
began to grow gray, I waked ; and as I did so, the 
sounds that smote on my ear caused me to sit up 
and throw off the warm blankets. Bull elk were 
challenging among the mountains on both sides of 
the valley, a little way from us, their notes echoing 
like the calling of silver bugles. Groping about in 
the dark, I drew on my trousers, an extra pair of 
thick socks, and my moccasins, donned a warm 
jacket, found my fur cap and gloves, and stole out 
of the tent with my rifle. 

The air was very cold; the stars were begin- 
ning to pale in the dawn ; on the ground the snow 
glimmered white, and lay in feathery masses on 
the branches of the balsams and young pines. The 
air rang with the challenges of many wapiti ; their 
incessant calling came pealing down through the 
still, snow-laden woods. First one bull chal- 
legend; then another answered; then another 



196 The Wilderness Hunter 

and another. Two herds were approaching one 
another from opposite sides of the valley, a short 
distance above our camp; and the master bulls 
were roaring defiance as they mustered their 
harems. 

I walked stealthily up the valley, until I felt 
that I was nearly between the two herds; and 
then stood motionless under a tall pine. The 
ground was quite open at this point, the pines, 
though large, being scattered; the little brook 
ran with a strangled murmur between its rows of 
willows and alders, for the ice along its edges 
nearly skimmed its breadth. The stars paled 
rapidly, the gray dawn brightened, and in the sky 
overhead faint rose-colored streaks were turning 
blood-red. What little wind there was breathed 
in my face and kept me from discovery. 

I made up my mind, from the sound of the chal- 
lenging, now very near me, that one bull on my 
right was advancing towards a rival on my left, 
who was answering every call. Soon the former 
approached so near that I could hear him crack 
the branches, and beat the bushes with his horns ; 
and I slipped quietly from tree to tree, so as to 
meet him when he came out into the more 
open woodland. Day broke, and crimson gleams 
played across the snow-clad mountains beyond. 

At last, just as the sun flamed red above the 
hill-tops, I heard the roar of the wapiti's challenge 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 197 

not fifty yards away ; and I cocked and half raised 
my rifle, and stood motionless. In a moment more, 
the belt of spruces in front of me swayed and 
opened, and the lordly bull stepped out. He bore 
his massive antlers aloft; the snow lay thick on 
his mane ; he snuffed the air and stamped on the 
ground as he walked. As I drew a bead, the mo- 
tion caught his eye ; and instantly his bearing of 
haughty and warlike self-confidence changed to 
one of alarm. My bullet smote through his 
shoulder-blades, and he plunged wildly forward, 
and fell full length on the blood-stained snow. 

Nothing can be finer than a wapiti bull's car- 
riage when excited or alarmed ; he then seems the 
embodiment of strength and stately grace. But 
at ordinary times his looks are less attractive, as 
he walks with his neck level with his body and his 
head outstretched, his horns lying almost on his 
shoulders. The favorite gait of the wapiti is the 
trot, which is very fast, and which they can keep 
up for countless miles ; when suddenly and greatly 
alarmed, they break into an awkward gallop, 
which is faster, but which speedily tires them. 

I have occasionally killed elk in the neighbor- 
hood of my ranch on the Little Missouri. They 
were very plentiful along this river until 1881, but 
the last of the big bands were slaughtered or scat- 
tered about that time. Smaller bunches were 
foimd for two or three years longer; and to this 



198 The Wilderness Hunter 

day, scattered individuals, singly or in parties of 
two or three, linger here and there in the most 
remote and inaccessible parts of the broken 
country. In the old times they were often found 
on the open prairie, and were fond of sunning 
themselves on the sand-bars by the river, even at 
midday, while they often fed by daylight (as they 
do still in remote mountain fastnesses). Now- 
adays the few survivors dwell in the timber of 
the roughest ravines, and only venture abroad at 
dusk or even after nightfall. Thanks to their 
wariness and seclusiveness, their presence is often 
not even suspected by the cowboys or others who 
occasionally ride through their haunts; and so 
the hunters only know vaguely of their existence. 
It thus happens that the last individuals of a spe- 
cies may linger in a locality for many years after 
the rest of their kind have vanished ; on the Little 
Missouri to-day every elk (as in the Rockies every 
buffalo) killed is at once set down as "the last of 
its race." For several years in succession I my- 
self kept killing one or two such "last survivors." 
A yearling bull which I thus obtained was killed 
while in company with my staunch friend Will 
Dow, on one of the first trips which I took with 
that prince of drivers, old man Tompkins. We 
were laying in our stock of winter meat ; and had 
taken the wagon to go to a knot of high and very 
rugged hills where we knew there were deer, and 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 199 

thought there might be elk. Old Tompkins drove 
the wagon with unmoved composure up, down, 
and across frightful-looking hills, and when they 
became wholly impassable, steered the team over 
a cut bank and up a kind of winding ravine or 
wooded washout, until it became too rough and 
narrow for farther progress. There was good 
grass for the horses on a hill off to one side of us ; 
and stunted cottonwood trees grew between the 
straight white walls of clay and sandstone which 
hemmed in the washout. We pitched our tent by 
a little trickling spring and kindled a great fire, 
the fitful glare lighting the bare cliffs and the queer 
sprawling tops of the cottonwoods; and after a 
dinner of fried prairie-chicken went to bed. At 
dawn we were off, and hunted till nearly noon, 
when Dow, who had been walking to one side, 
beckoned to me and remarked: "There 's some- 
thing mighty big in the timber down under the 
cliff; I guess it 's an elk" (he had never seen one 
before) ; and the next moment, as old Tompkins 
expressed it, "the elk came bilin' out of the cou- 
lie." Old Tompkins had a rifle on this occasion, 
and the sight of game always drove him crazy ; as 
I aimed I heard Dow telling him to "let the boss 
do the shooting" ; and I killed the elk to a savage 
inter jectional accompaniment of threats delivered 
at old man Tompkins between the shots. 

Elk are sooner killed off than any other game 



200 The Wilderness Hunter 

save buffalo, but this is due to their size and the 
nature of the ground they frequent rather than to 
their lack of shyness. They like open woodland, 
or mountainous park country, or hills riven by 
timber coulies ; and such ground is the most fa- 
vorable to the hunter, and the most attractive in 
which to hunt. On the other hand, moose, for 
instance, live in such dense cover that it is very 
difficult to get at them; when elk are driven by 
incessant persecution to take refuge in similar 
fastnesses they become almost as hard to kill. In 
fact, in this respect the elk stands to the moose 
much as the blacktail stands to the whitetail. 
The moose and whitetail are somewhat warier 
than the elk and blacktail ; but it is the nature of 
the ground which they inhabit that tells most in 
their favor. On the other hand, as compared to 
the blacktail, it is only the elk's size which puts it 
at a disadvantage in the struggle for life when the 
rifle-bearing hunter appears on the scene. It is 
quite as shy and difficult to approach as the deer ; 
but its bulk renders it much more eagerly hunted, 
more readily seen, and more easily hit. Occasion- 
ally elk suffer from fits of stupid tameness or 
equally stupid panic : but the same is true of black- 
tail. In two or three instances I have seen elk 
show silly ignorance of danger; but half a dozen 
times I have known blacktail behave with an even 
greater degree of stupid familiarity. 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 201 

There is another point in which the wapiti and 
blacktail agree in contrast to the moose and white- 
tail. Both the latter delight in water-lilies, enter- 
ing the ponds to find them, and feeding on them 
greedily. The wapiti is very fond of wallowing in 
the mud, and of bathing in pools and lakes; but 
as a rule it shows as little fondness as the blacktail 
for feeding on water-lilies or other aquatic plants. 

In reading of the European red deer, which is 
nothing but a diminutive wapiti, we often see a 
"stag of ten" alluded to as if a full-grown monarch. 
A full-grown wapiti bull, however, always has 
twelve, and may have fourteen, regular normal 
points on his antlers, besides irregular additional 
prongs ; and he occasionally has ten points when 
a two-year-old, as I have myself seen with calves 
captured young and tamed. The calf has no 
horns. The yearling carries two foot-long spikes, 
sometimes bifurcated, so as to make four points. 
The two-year-old often has six or eight points on 
his antlers ; but sometimes ten, although they are 
always small. The three-year-old has eight or 
ten points, while his body may be nearly as large 
as that of a full-grown animal. The four-year- 
old is normally a ten- or twelve-pointer, but as yet 
with much smaller antlers than those so proudly 
borne by the old bulls. 

Frontiersmen only occasionally distinguish the 
prongs by name. The brow and bay points are 



202 The Wilderness Hunter 

called dog-killers or war-tines ; the tray is known 
simply as the third point ; and the most character- 
istic prong, the long and massive fourth, is now 
and then called the dagger-point ; the others being 
known as the fifth and sixth. 

In the high mountain forest into which the 
wapiti has been driven, the large, heavily furred 
northern lynx, the lucivee, takes the place of the 
smaller, thinner-haired lynx of the plains and of 
the more southern districts, the bobcat or wildcat. 
On the Little Missouri the latter is the common 
form; yet I have seen a lucivee which was killed 
there. On Clarke's Fork of the Columbia both 
occur, the lucivee being the most common. They 
feed chiefly on hares, squirrels, grouse, fawns, etc. ; 
and the lucivee, at least, also occasionally kills 
foxes and coons, and has in its turn to dread the 
pounce of the big timber wolf. Both kinds of lynx 
can most easily be killed with dogs, as they tree 
quite readily when thus pursued. The wildcat is 
often followed on horseback, with a pack of hounds 
when the country is favorable; and when chased 
in this fashion yields excellent sport. The skin of 
both these lynxes is tender. They often maul an 
inexperienced pack quite badly, inflicting several 
scratches and bites on any hound which has just 
resolution enough to come to close quarters, but 
not to rush in furiously; but a big fighting dog 
will readily kill either. At Thompson's Falls two 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 203 

of Willis's hounds killed a lucivee unaided, though 
one got torn. Archibald Rogers's dog Sly, a cross 
between a greyhound and a bull mastiff, killed a 
bobcat single-handed. He bayed the cat and then 
began to threaten it, leaping from side to side; 
suddenly he broke the motion, and rushing in got 
his foe by the small of the back and killed it with- 
out receiving a scratch. 

The porcupine is sure to attract the notice of 
any one going through the mountains. It is also 
found in the timber belts fringing the streams of 
the great plains, where it lives for a week at a time 
in a single tree or clump of trees, peeling the bark 
from the limbs. But it is the easiest of all animals 
to exterminate, and is now abundant only in deep 
mountain forests. It is very tame and stupid ; it 
goes on the ground, but its fastest pace is a clumsy 
waddle, and on trees, but is the poorest of tree- 
climbers,— grasping the trunk like a small, slow 
bear. It can neither escape nor hide. It trusts 
to its quills for protection, as the skunk does to its 
odor; but it is far less astute and more helpless 
than the skunk. It is readily made into a very 
unsuspicious and familiar, but uninteresting, pet. 
I have known it come into camp in the daytime, 
and forage round the fire by which I was sitting. 
Its coat protects it against most foes. Bears 
sometimes eat it when very hungry, as they will 
eat anything; and I think that elk occasionally 



204 The Wilderness Hunter 

destroy it in sheer wantonness. One of its most 
resolute foes is the fisher, that big sable — almost a 
wolverine — which preys on everything, from a 
coon to a fawn, or even a small fox. 

The noisy, active Httle chickarees and chip- 
munks, however, are by far the most numerous 
and lively denizens of these deep forests. They 
are very abundant and very noisy; scolding the 
travellers exactly as they do the bears when the 
latter dig up the caches of ants. The chipmunks 
soon grow tame and visit camp to pick up the 
crusts. The chickarees often ascend to the high- 
est pine tops, where they cut off the cones, drop- 
ping them to the ground with a noise which often 
for a moment puzzles the still-hunter. 

Two of the most striking and characteristic 
birds to be seen by him who hunts and camps 
among the pine-clad and spruce-clad slopes of the 
northern Rockies are a small crow and a rather 
large woodpecker. The former is called Clark's 
crow, and the latter Lewis's woodpecker. Their 
names commemorate their discoverers, the ex- 
plorers Lewis and Clark, the first white men who 
crossed the United States to the Pacific, the pio- 
neers of that great army of adventurers who since 
then have roamed and hunted over the great 
plains and among the Rocky Mountains. 

These birds are nearly of a size, being about 
as large as a flicker. The Clark crow, an ash- 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 205 

colored bird with black wings and white tail and 
forehead, is as common as it is characteristic, and 
is sure to attract attention. It is as knowing as 
the rest of its race, and very noisy and active. It 
flies sometimes in a straight line, with regular 
wing-beats, sometimes in a succession of loops 
like a woodpecker, and often lights on rough bark 
or a dead stump in an attitude like the latter ; and 
it is very fond of scrambling and clinging, often 
head downwards, among the outermost cones on 
the top of a pine, chattering loudly all the while. 
One of the noticeable features of its flight is the 
hollow, beating sound of the wings. It is restless 
and fond of company, going by preference in small 
parties. These little parties often indulge in reg- 
ular plays, assembling in some tall tree-top and 
saihng round and round it, in noisy pursuit of one 
another, lighting continually among the branches. 
The Lewis woodpecker, a handsome, dark- 
green bird, with white breast and red belly," is 
much rarer, quite as shy, and generally less noisy 
and conspicuous. Its flight is usually strong and 
steady, like a jay's, and it perches upright among 
the twigs, or takes short flights after passing in- 
sects, as often as it scrambles over the twigs in 
the ordinary woodpecker fashion. Like its com- 
panion, the Clark crow, it is ordinarily a bird 
of the high tree-tops, and around these it in- 
dulges in curious aerial games, again like those of 



2o6 The Wilderness Hunter 

the little crow. It is fond of going in troops, and 
such a troop frequently choose some tall pine and 
soar round and above it in irregular spirals. 

The remarkable and almost amphibious little 
water-wren, with its sweet song, its familiarity, 
and its very curious habit of running on the 
bottom of the stream, several feet beneath the 
surface of the race of rapid water, is the most 
noticeable of the small birds of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. It sometimes sings loudly while floating 
with half spread wings on the surface of a little 
pool. Taken as a whole, small birds are far less 
numerous and noticeable in the wilderness, especi- 
ally in the deep forests, than in the groves and 
farmland of the settled country. The hunter and 
trapper are less familiar with small-bird music 
than with the screaming of the eagle and the 
large hawks, the croaking bark of the raven, 
the loon's cry, the crane's guttural clangor, and 
the unearthly yelling and hooting of the big owls. 

No bird is so common around camp, so familiar, 
so amusing on some occasions, and so annoying on 
others, as that drab-colored imp of iniquity, the 
whisky-jack— also known as the moose-bird and 
camp-robber. The familiarity of these birds is 
astonishing, and the variety of their cries — gen- 
erally harsh, but rarely musical — extraordinary. 
They snatch scraps of food from the entrances of 
the tents, and from beside the camp-fire ; and they 



Wapiti or Round-Horned Elk 207 

shred the venison hung in the trees unless closely- 
watched. I have seen an irate cook of accurate 
aim knock one off an elk-haunch, with a club 
seized at random; and I have known another to 
be killed with a switch, and yet another to be 
caught alive in the hand. When game is killed 
they are the first birds to come to the carcass. 
Following them come the big jays, of a uniform 
dark-blue color, who bully them, and are bullied 
in turn by the next arrivals, the magpies ; while, 
when the big ravens come, they keep all the others 
in the background, with the exception of an occa- 
sional wide-awake magpie. 

For a steady diet, no meat tastes better or is 
more nourishing than elk venison ; moreover, the 
different kinds of grouse give variety to the fare, 
and delicious trout swarm throughout the haunts 
of the elk in the Rockies. I have never seen them 
more numerous than in the wonderful and beauti- 
ful Yellowstone Canyon, a couple of miles below 
where the river pitches over the Great Falls, in 
wind-swayed cataracts of snowy foam. At this 
point it runs like a mill-race, in its narrow, winding 
bed, between immense walls of queerly carved and 
colored rock, which tower aloft in almost per- 
pendicular cliffs. Late one afternoon in the fall of 
'90 Ferguson and I clambered down into the can- 
yon, with a couple of rods, and in an hour caught 
all the fish we could carry. It then lacked much 



2o8 The Wilderness Hunter 

less than an hour of nightfall, and we had a hard 
climb to get out of the canyon before darkness 
overtook us ; as there was not a vestige of a path, 
and as the climbing was exceedingly laborious and 
at one or two points not entirely without danger, 
the rocks being practicable in very few places, we 
could hardly have made much progress after it 
became too dark to see. Each of us carried the 
bag of trout in turn, and I personally was nearly 
done out when we reached the top ; and then had 
to trot three miles to the horses. 



CHAPTER X 

AN ELK-HUNT AT TWO-OCEAN PASS 

IN September, 1891, with my ranch-partner, 
Ferguson, I made an elk-hunt in north- 
western Wyoming among the Shoshone Moim- 
tains, where they join the Hoodoo and Absoraka 
ranges. There is no more beautiful game-country 
in the United States. It is a park land, where 
glades, meadows, and high mountain pastures 
break the evergreen forest — a forest which is open 
compared to the tangled density of the woodland 
farther north. It is a high, cold region of many 
lakes and clear rushing streams. The steep moun- 
tains are generally of the rounded form so often 
seen in the ranges of the Cordilleras of the United 
States; but the Hoodoos, or Goblins, are carved 
in fantastic and extraordinary shapes; while the 
Tetons, a group of isolated rock-peaks, show a 
striking boldness in their lofty outlines. 

This was one of the pleasantest hunts I ever 
made. As always in the mountains, save where 
the country is so rough and so densely wooded 
that one must go afoot, we had a pack-train ; and 
we took a more complete outfit than we had ever 

VOL. I.— 14 

209 



2IO The Wilderness Hunter 

before taken on such a hunt, and so travelled in 
much comfort. Usually when in the mountains 
I have merely had one companion, or at most a 
couple, and two or three pack-ponies ; each of us 
doing his share of the packing, cooking, fetching 
water, and pitching the small square of canvas 
which served as tent. In itself, packing is both an 
art and a mystery, and a skilful professional 
packer, versed in the intricacies of the "diamond 
hitch," packs with a speed which no non-profes- 
sional can hope to rival, and fixes the side packs 
and top packs with such scientific nicety, and ad- 
justs the doubles and turns of the lash-rope so 
accurately, that everything stays in place under 
any but the most adverse conditions. Of course, 
like most hunters, I can myself in case of need 
throw the diamond hitch after a fashion, and pack 
on either the off or near side. Indeed, unless a 
man can pack it is not possible to make a really 
hard hunt in the mountains if alone, or with only 
a single companion. The mere fair-weather hun- 
ter, who trusts entirely to the exertions of others, 
and does nothing more than ride or walk about 
under favorable circumstances, and shoots at 
what somebody else shows him, is a hunter in name 
only. Whoever would really deserve the title 
must be able at a pinch to shift for himself, to 
grapple with the difficulties and hardships of 
wilderness life imaided, and not only to himt, but 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 211 

at times to travel for days, whether on foot or on 
horseback, alone. However, after one has passed 
one's novitiate, it is pleasant to be comfortable 
when the comfort does not interfere with the 
sport; and although a man sometimes likes to 
hunt alone, yet often it is well to be with some old 
mountain hunter, a master of woodcraft, who is a 
first-rate hand at finding game, creeping upon it, 
and tracking it when wounded. With such a 
companion one gets much more game, and learns 
many things by observation instead of by painful 
experience. 

On this trip we had with us two hunters, Taze- 
well Woody and Elwood Hofer, a packer who 
acted as cook, and a boy to herd the horses. Of 
the latter, there were twenty: six saddle-animals 
and fourteen for the packs — two or three being 
spare horses, to be used later in carrying the elk- 
antlers, sheep-horns, and other trophies. Like 
most hunters' pack-animals, they were either 
half-broken, or else broken down; tough, un- 
kempt, jaded-looking beasts of every color — sor- 
rel, buckskin, pinto, white, bay, roan. After the 
day's work was over, they were turned loose to 
shift for themselves ; and about once a week they 
strayed, and all hands had to spend the better 
part of the day hunting for them. The worst 
ones for straying, curiously enough, were three 
brokendown old "bear-baits," which went by 



2 12 The Wilderness Hunter 

themselves, as is generally the case with the 
cast-off horses of a herd. There were two sleeping 
tents, another for the provisions, — in which we ate 
during bad weather, — and a canvas tepee, which 
was put up with lodge-poles, Indian fashion, like a 
wigwam. A tepee is more difficult to put up than 
an ordinary tent ; but it is very convenient when 
there is rain or snow. A small fire kindled in the 
middle keeps it warm, the smoke escaping through 
the open top — that is, when it escapes at all; 
strings are passed from one pole to another, on 
which to hang wet clothes and shoes, and the beds 
are made around the edges. As an offset to the 
warmth and shelter, the smoke often renders it 
impossible even to sit upright. We had a very 
good camp-kit, including plenty of cooking- and 
eating-utensils; and among our provisions were 
some canned goods and sweetmeats, to give a 
relish to our meals of meat and bread. We had 
fur coats and warm clothes, — which are chiefly 
needed at night, — and plenty of bedding, includ- 
ing waterproof canvas sheeting and a couple of 
caribou-hide sleeping-bags, procured from the sur- 
vivors of a party of arctic explorers. Except on 
rainy days I used my buckskin hunting-shirt or 
tunic; in dry weather I deem^ it, because of its 
color, texture, and durability, the best possible 
garb for the still-hunter, especially in the woods. 
Starting a day's journey south of Heart Lake, 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 213 

we travelled and hunted on the eastern edge of 
the great basin, wooded and mountainous, where- 
in rises the head-waters of the mighty Snake 
River. There was not so much as a spotted line — 
that series of blazes made with the axe, man's first 
highway through the hoary forest; but this we 
did not mind, as for most of the distance we fol- 
lowed the well-worn elk trails. The train travelled 
in Indian file. At the head, to pick the path, rode 
tall, silent old Woody, a true type of the fast- 
vanishing race of game hunters and Indian fight- 
ers, a man who had been one of the California 
forty-niners, and who ever since had lived the rest- 
less, reckless life of the wilderness. Then came 
Ferguson and myself; then the pack-animals, 
strung out in line; while from the rear rose the 
varied oaths of our three companions, whose mis- 
erable duty it was to urge forward the beasts of 
burden. 

It is heart-breaking work to drive a pack-train 
through thick timber and over moimtains, where 
there is either a dim trail or none. The animals 
have a perverse faculty for choosing the wrong 
turn at critical moments ; and they are continually 
scraping imder branches and squeezing between 
tree-trunks, to the jeopardy or destruction of 
their burdens. After having been laboriously 
driven up a very steep incline, at the cost of severe 
exertion both to them and to the men, the foolish 



214 The Wilderness Hunter 

creatures turn and run down to the bottom, so 
that all the work has to be done over again. Some 
travel too slow ; others travel too fast. Yet one 
cannot but admire the toughness of the animals, 
and the surefootedness with which they pick their 
way along the sheer mountain-sides, or among 
boulders and over fallen logs. 

As our way was so rough, we found that we had 
to halt at least once every hour to fix the packs. 
Moreover, we at the head of the column were 
continually being appealed to for help by the un- 
fortunates in the rear. First it would be " that 
white-eyed cayuse; one side of its pack 's down!" 
then we would be notified that the saddle-blanket 
of the "lop-eared Indian buckskin" had slipped 
back; then a shout "Look out for the pinto!" 
would be followed by that pleasing beast's appear- 
ance, bucking and squealing, smashing dead tim- 
ber, and scattering its load to the four winds. It 
was no easy task to get the horses across some of 
the boggy places without miring ; or to force them 
through the denser portions of the forest, w^here 
there was much down timber. Riding with a 
pack-train, day in and day out, becomes both 
monotonous and irritating, unless one is upheld 
by the hope of a game country ahead, or by the 
delight of exploration of the unknown. Yet when 
buoyed by such a hope, there is pleasure in taking 
a train across so beautiful and wild a country as 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 215 

that which lay on the threshold of our hunting- 
grounds in the Shoshones. We went over moun- 
tain passes, with ranges of scalped peaks on either 
hand ; we skirted the edges of lovely lakes, and of 
streams with boulder-strewn beds; we plunged 
into depths of sombre woodland, broken by wet 
prairies. It was a picturesque sight to see the 
loaded pack-train stringing across one of these 
high mountain meadows, the motley colored line 
of ponies winding round the marshy spots through 
the bright green grass, while beyond rose the dark 
line of frowning forest, with lofty peaks towering 
in the background. Some of the meadows were 
beautiful with many flowers — goldenrod, purple 
aster, bluebells, white immortelles, and here and 
there masses of blood-red Indian pinks. In the 
park country, on the edges of the evergreen forest, 
were groves of delicate quaking-aspen, the trees 
often growing to quite a height ; their tremulous 
leaves were already changing to bright green and 
yellow, occasionally with a reddish blush. In the 
Rocky Mountains the aspens are almost the only 
deciduous trees, their foliage offering a pleasant 
relief to the eye after the monotony of the imend- 
ing pine and spruce woods, which afford so strik- 
ing a contrast to the hardwood forest east of the 
Mississippi. 

For two days our journey was uneventful, save 
that we came on the camp of a squaw-man — one 



2i6 The Wilderness Hunter 

Beaver Dick, an old mountain hunter, living in a 
skin tepee, where dwelt his comely Indian wife 
and half-breed children. He had quite a herd of 
horses, many of them mares and colts ; they had 
evidently been well treated, and came up to us 
fearlessly. 

The morning of the third day of our journey 
was gray and lowering. Gusts of rain blew in my 
face as I rode at the head of the train. It still 
lacked an hour of noon, as we were plodding up a 
valley beside a rapid brook running through nar- 
row willow-flats, the dark forest crowding down 
on either hand from the low foothills of the moun- 
tains. Suddenly the call of a bull elk came echoing 
down through the wet woodland on our right, be- 
yond the brook, seemingly less than half a mile 
off, and was answered by a faint, far-off call from 
a rival on the mountain beyond. Instantly halt- 
ing the train. Woody and I slipped off our horses, 
crossed the brook, and started to still-hunt the 
first bull. 

In this place the forest was composed of the 
western tamarack; the large, tall trees stood well 
apart, and there was much down timber, but the 
ground was covered with deep wet moss, over 
which we trod silently. The elk was travelHng 
up-wind, but slowly, stopping continually to paw 
the ground and thresh the bushes with his antlers. 
He was very noisy, challenging every minute or 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 217 

two, being doubtless much excited by the neigh- 
borhood of his rival on the mountain. We fol- 
lowed, Woody leading, guided by the incessant 
calling. 

It was very exciting as we crept toward the 
great bull, and the challenge sounded nearer and 
nearer. While we were still at some distance the 
pealing notes were like those of a bugle, delivered 
in two bars, first rising, then abruptly falling ; as 
we drew nearer they took on a harsh squealing 
sound. Each call made our veins thrill ; it soimded 
like the cry of some huge beast of prey. At last 
we heard the roar of the challenge not eighty yards 
off. Stealing forward three or four yards, I saw 
the tips of the horns through a mass of dead tim- 
ber and young growth, and I slipped to one side 
to get a clean shot. Seeing us, but not making 
out what we were, and full of fierce and insolent 
excitement, the wapiti bull stepped boldly toward 
us with a stately swinging gait. Then he stood 
motionless, facing us, barely fifty yards away, his 
handsome twelve-tined antlers tossed aloft, as he 
held his head with the lordly grace of his kind. I 
fired into his chest, and as he turned I raced for- 
ward and shot him in the flank; but the second 
bullet was not needed, for the first wound was 
mortal, and he fell before going fifty yards. 

The dead elk lay among the young evergreens. 
The huge, shapely body was set on legs that were 



2i8 The Wilderness Hunter 

as strong as steel rods, and yet slender, clean, and 
smooth; they were in color a beautiful dark 
brown, contrasting well with the yellowish of the 
body. The neck and throat were garnished with 
a mane of long hair; the symmetry of the great 
horns set off the fine, delicate lines of the noble 
head. He had been wallowing, as elk are fond of 
doing, and the dried mud clung in patches to his 
flank; a stab in the haunch showed that he had 
been overcome in battle by some master bull who 
had turned him out of the herd. 

We cut off the head, and bore it down to the 
train. The horses crowded together, snorting, 
with their ears pricked forward, as they smelt the 
blood. We also took the loins with us, as we were 
out of meat, though bull elk in the rutting season 
is not very good. The rain had changed to a 
steady downpour when we again got under way. 
Two or three miles farther we pitched camp, in a 
clump of pines on a hillock in the bottom of the 
valley, starting hot fires of pitchy stumps before 
the tents, to dry our wet things. 

Next day opened with fog and cold rain. The 
drenched pack-animals, when driven into camp, 
stood mopingly, with drooping heads and arched 
backs; they groaned and grunted as the loads 
were placed on their backs and the cinches tight- 
ened, the packers bracing one foot against the 
pack to get a purchase as they hauled in on the 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 219 

lash-rope. A stormy morning is a trial to temper; 
the packs are wet and heavy, and the cold makes 
the work even more than usually hard on the 
hands. By ten we broke camp. It needs be- 
tween two and three hours to break camp and get 
such a train properly packed; once started, our 
day's journey was six to eight hours, making no 
halt. We started up a steep, pine-clad mountain- 
side, broken by cliffs. My hunting-shoes, though 
comfortable, were old and thin, and let the water 
through like a sieve. On the top of the first pla- 
teau, where black spruce groves were strewn 
across the grassy surface, we saw a band of elk, 
cows and calves, trotting off through the rain. 
Then we plunged down into a deep valley, and, 
crossing it, a hard climb took us to the top of a 
great bare table-land, bleak and wind-swept. We 
passed little alpine lakes, fringed with scattering 
dwarf evergreens. Snow lay in drifts on the 
north side of the gullies ; a cutting wind blew the 
icy rain in our faces. For two or three hours we 
travelled toward the farther edge of the table- 
land. In one place a spike bull elk stood half a 
mile off, in the open; he travelled to and fro, 
watching us. 

As we neared the edge the storm lulled, and 
pale, watery sunshine gleamed through the rifts 
in the low-scudding clouds. At last our horses 
stood on the brink of a bold cliff. Deep down 



220 The Wilderness Hunter 

beneath our feet lay the wild and lonely valley of 
Two-Ocean Pass, walled in on either hand by 
rugged mountain chains, their flanks scarred and 
gashed by precipice and chasm. Beyond, in a 
wilderness of jagged and barren peaks, stretched 
the Shoshones. At the middle point of the pass, 
two streams welled down from either side. At 
first each flowed in but one bed, but soon divided 
into two; each of the twin branches then joined 
the like branch of the brook opposite, and swept 
one to the east and one to the west, on their long 
journey to the two great oceans. They ran as 
rapid brooks, through wet meadows and willow- 
flats, the eastern to the Yellowstone, the western 
to the Snake. The dark pine forests swept down 
from the flanks and lower ridges of the mountains 
to the edges of the marshy valley. Above them 
jutted gray rock-peaks, snowdrifts lying in the 
rents that seamed their northern faces. Far be- 
low us, from a great basin at the foot of the cliff, 
filled with the pine forest, rose the musical chal- 
lenge of a bull elk; and we saw a band of cows and 
calves looking like mice as they ran among the 
trees. 

It was getting late, and after some search we 
failed to find any trail leading down ; so at last we 
plunged over the brink at a venture. It was very 
rough scrambling, dropping from bench to bench, 
and in places it was not only difficult but danger- 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 221 

ous for the loaded pack-animals. Here and there 
we were helped by well-beaten elk trails, which we 
could follow for several hundred yards at a time. 
On one narrow pine-clad ledge, we met a spike 
bull face to face ; and in scrambling down a very 
steep, bare, rock-strewn shoulder the loose stones 
started by the horses' hoofs, bounding in great 
leaps to the forest below, dislodged two cows. 

As evening fell, we reached the bottom, and 
pitched camp in a beautiful point of open pine 
forest, thrust out into the meadow. There was 
good shelter, and plenty of wood, water, and 
grass ; we built a huge fire and put up our tents, 
scattering them in likely places among the pines, 
which grew far apart and without undergrowth. 
We dried our steaming clothes, and ate a hearty 
supper of elk-meat ; then we turned into our beds, 
warm and dry, and slept soundly under the can- 
vas, while all night long the storm roared with- 
out. Next morning it still stormed fitfully; the 
high peaks and ridges round about were all capped 
with snow. Woody and I started on foot for an 
all-day tramp ; the amount of game seen the day 
before showed that we were in good elk coimtry, 
where the elk had been so little disturbed that 
they were traveUing, feeding, and whistling in 
daylight. For three hours we walked across the 
forest-clad spurs of the foothills. We roused a 
small band of elk in thick timber; but they 



222 The Wilderness Hunter 

rushed off before we saw them, with much 
smashing of dead branches. Then we cHmbed to 
the summit of the range. The wind was hght 
and baffling; it blew from all points, veering 
every few minutes. There were occasional rain- 
squalls; our feet and legs were well soaked; and 
we became chilled through whenever we sat 
down to listen. We caught a glimpse of a big 
bull feeding up-hill, and followed him; it needed 
smart running to overtake him, for an elk, even 
while feeding, has a ground-covering gait. Fin- 
ally we got within a hundred and twenty-five 
yards, but in very thick timber, and all I could 
see plainly was the hip and the after-part of the 
flank. I waited for a chance at the shoulder, 
but the bull got my wind and was off before I 
could pull trigger. It was just one of those oc- 
casions when there are two courses to pursue, 
neither very good, and when one is apt to regret 
whichever decision is made. 

At noon we came to the edge of a deep and 
wide gorge, and sat down shivering to wait what 
might turn up, our fingers numb, and our wet 
feet icy. Suddenly the love-challenge of an elk 
came pealing across the gorge, through the fine, 
cold rain, from the heart of the forest opposite 
An hour's stiff climb, down and up, brought us 
nearly to him ; but the wind forced us to advance 
from below through a series of open glades. He 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 223 

was lying on a point of the cliff-shoulder, sur- 
rounded by his cows, and he saw us and made 
off. An hour afterward, as we were trudging up 
a steep hillside dotted with groves of fir and 
spruce, a young bull of ten points, roused from 
his day-bed by our approach, galloped across us 
some sixty yards off. We were in need of better 
venison than can be furnished by an old rutting 
bull; so I instantly took shot at the fat and 
tender young ten-pointer. I aimed well ahead 
and pulled trigger just as he came to a small gully, 
and he fell into it in a heap with a resounding 
crash. This was on the birthday of my eldest 
small son; so I took him home the horns, "for 
his very own." On the way back that after- 
noon I shot off the heads of two blue grouse, as 
they perched in the pines. 

That evening the storm broke, and the weather 
became clear and very cold, so that the snow 
made the frosty mountains gleam like silver. 
The moon was full, and in the flood of light the 
wild scenery round our camp was very beautiful. 
As always where we camped for several days, we 
had fixed long tables and settles, and were most 
comfortable ; and when we came in at nightfall, or 
sometimes long afterward, cold, tired, and hun- 
gry, it was sheer physical delight to get warm 
before the roaring fire of pitchy stumps, and then 
to feast ravenously on bread and beans, on stewed 



224 The Wilderness Hunter 

or roasted elk venison, on grouse, and sometimes 
trout, and flapjacks with maple syrup. 

Next morning dawned clear and cold, the sky 
a glorious blue. Woody and I started to hunt 
over the great table-land, and led our stout horses 
up the mountain-side, by elk trails so bad that 
they had to climb like goats. All these elk trails 
have one striking peculiarity. They lead through 
thick timber, but every now and then send off 
short, well-worn branches to some cliff -edge or 
jutting crag, commanding a view far and wide 
over the country beneath. Elk love to stand on 
these lookout points, and scan the valleys and 
mountains round about. 

Blue grouse rose from beside our path ; Clarke's 
crows flew past us, with a hollow, flapping sound, 
or lit in the pine-tops, calling and flirting their 
tails; the gray-clad whisky- jacks, with multi- 
tudinous cries, hopped and fluttered near us. 
Snow-shoe rabbits scuttled away, the big furry 
feet which give them their name already turning 
white. At last we came out on the great plateau, 
seamed with deep, narrow ravines. Reaches of 
pasture alternated with groves and open forests 
of varying size. Almost immediately we heard 
the bugle of a bull elk, and saw a big band of 
cows and calves on the other side of a valley. 
There were three bulls with them, one very large, 
and we tried to creep up on them; but the wind 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 225 

was baffling and spoiled our stalk. So we re- 
turned to our horses, mounted them, and rode a 
mile farther, toward a large open wood on a hill- 
side. When within two hundred yards we heard 
directly ahead the bugle of a bull, and pulled up 
short. In a moment I saw him walking through 
an open glade; he had not seen us. The slight 
breeze brought us down his scent. Elk have a 
strong characteristic smell; it is usually sweet, 
like that of a herd of Aldemey cows; but in old 
bulls, while rutting, it is rank, pungent, and 
lasting. We stood motionless till the bull was 
out of sight, then stole to the wood, tied our 
horses, and trotted after him. He was travelUng 
fast, occasionally cahing; whereupon others in 
the neighborhood would answer. Evidently he 
had been driven out of some herd by the master 
bull. 

He went faster than we did, and while we were 
vainly trying to overtake him we heard another 
very loud and sonorous challenge to our left. It 
came from a ridge-crest at the edge of the woods, 
among some scattered clumps of the northern 
nut-pine or pinyon — a queer conifer, growing very 
high on the mountains, its multiforked trunk and 
wide-spreading branches giving it the rounded 
top, and, at a distance, the general look of an 
oak rather than a pine. We at once walked 
toward the ridge, up-wind. In a minute or two, 

VOL. I. — 15. 



226 The Wilderness Hunter 

to our chagrin, we stumbled on an out-lying 
spike bull, evidently kept on the out-skirts of the 
herd by the master bull. I thought he would 
alarm all the rest; but, as we stood motionless, 
he could not see clearly what we were. He 
stood, ran, stood again, gazed at us, and trotted 
slowly off. We hurried forward as fast as we 
dared, and with too little care; for we suddenly 
came in view of two cows. As they raised their 
heads to look, Woody squatted down where he 
was, to keep their attention fixed, while I cau- 
tiously tried to slip off to one side unobserved. 
Favored by the neutral tint of my buckskin 
hunting-shirt, with which my shoes, leggins, and 
soft hat matched, I succeeded. As soon as I 
was out of sight I ran hard and came up to a 
hillock crested with pinyons, behind which I 
judged I should find the herd. As I approached 
the crest, their strong, sweet smell smote my 
nostrils. In another moment I saw the tips of a 
pair of mighty antlers, and I peered over the 
crest with my rifle at the ready. Thirty yards off, 
behind a clump of pinyons, stood a huge bull, his 
head thrown back as he rubbed his shoulders 
with his horns. There were several cows around 
him, and one saw me immediately, and took 
alarm. I fired into the bull's shoulder, inflicting 
a mortal wound; but he went off, and I raced 
after him at top speed, firing twice into his flank; 



; ^)!.-'.<;«t "•«,■?• .■??.r,s«s-;6ai/A^w 



Hunting the Elk. 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 227 

then he stopped, very sick, and I broke his neck 
with a fourth bullet. An elk often hesitates in 
the first moments of surprise and fright, and 
does not get really under way for two or three 
hundred yards; but, when once fairly started, 
he may go several miles, even though mortally 
wounded; therefore, the hunter, after his first 
shot, should run forward as fast as he can, and 
shoot again and again until the quarry drops. 
In this way many animals that would be other- 
wise lost are obtained, especially by the man who 
has a repeating-rifle. Nevertheless, the hunter 
should beware of being led astray by the ease 
with which he can fire half a dozen shots from 
his repeater ; and he should aim as carefully with 
each shot as if it were his last. No possible 
rapidity of fire can atone for habitual careless- 
ness of aim with the first shot. 

The elk I thus slew was a giant. His body 
was the size of a steer's, and his antlers, though 
not imusually long, were very massive and heavy. 
He lay in a glade, on the edge of a great cliff. 
Standing on its brink we overlooked a most 
beautiful country, the home of all homes for the 
elk: a wilderness of mountains, the immense 
evergreen forest broken by park and glade, by 
meadow and pasture, by bare hillside and barren 
table-land. Some five miles off lay the sheet of 
water known to the old himters as Spotted Lake ; 



228 The Wilderness Hunter 

two or three shallow, sedgy places, and spots of 
geyser formation, made pale green blotches on 
its wind-rippled surface. Far to the southwest, 
in daring beauty and majesty, the grand domes 
and lofty spires of the Tetons shot into the blue 
sky. Too sheer for the snow to rest on their 
sides, it yet filled the rents in their rough flanks, 
and lay deep between the towering pinnacles of 
dark rock. 

That night, as on more than one night after- 
ward, a bull elk came down whistling to within 
two or three hundred yards of the tents, and 
tried to join the horse-herd. The moon had set, 
so I could not go after it. Elk are very restless 
and active throughout the night in the rutting 
season; but where undisturbed they feed freely 
in the daytime, resting for two or three hours 
about noon. 

Next day, which was rainy, we spent in getting 
in the antlers and meat of the two dead elk; and 
I shot off the heads of two or three blue grouse on 
the way home. The following day I killed an- 
other bull elk, following him by the strong, not 
unpleasing, smell, and hitting him twice as he 
ran, at about eighty yards. So far I had had 
good luck, killing everything I had shot at; but 
now the luck changed, through no fault of mine, 
as far as I could see, and Ferguson had his in- 
nings. The day after I killed this bull he shot 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 229 

two fine mountain rams ; and during the remain- 
der of our hunt he killed five elk— one cow, for 
meat, and four good bulls. The two rams were 
with three others, all old and with fine horns; 
Ferguson peeped over a lofty precipice and saw 
them coming up it only fifty yards below him. 
His two first and finest bulls were obtained by 
hard running and good shooting; the herds were 
on the move at the time, and only his speed of 
foot and soundness of wind enabled him to get 
near enough for a shot. One herd started before 
he got close, and he killed the master bull by a 
shot right through the heart, as it trotted past, 
a hundred and fifty yards distant. 

As for me, during the next ten days I killed 
nothing save one cow for meat ; and this though 
I hunted hard every day from morning till night, 
no matter what the weather. It was stormy, with 
hail and snow every day almost ; and after work- 
ing hard from dawn until nightfall, laboriously 
climbing the slippery mountain-sides, walking 
through the wet woods, and struggling across 
the bare plateaus and cliff -shoulders, while the 
violent blasts of wind drove the frozen rain in 
our faces, we would come in after dusk wet 
through and chilled to the marrow. Even when 
it rained in the valleys it snowed on the moun- 
tain-tops, and there was no use trying to keep our 
feet dry. I got three shots at bull elk, two being 



230 The Wilderness Hunter 

very hurried snap-shots at animals running in 
thick timber, the other a running-shot in the open, 
at over two hundred yards; and I missed all 
three. On most days I saw no bull worth shoot- 
ing; the two or three I did see or hear we failed 
to stalk, the light, shifty wind baffling us, or else 
an outlying cow which we had not seen giving 
the alarm. There were many blue and a few 
ruffed grouse in the woods, and I occasionally 
shot off the heads of a couple on my way home- 
ward in the evening. In racing after one elk, I 
leaped across a gully and so bruised and twisted 
my heel on a rock that, for the remainder of my 
stay in the mountains, I had to walk on the fore 
part of that foot. This did not interfere much 
with my walking, however, except in going down 
hill. 

Our ill success was in part due to sheer bad 
luck; but the chief element therein was the pres- 
ence of a great hunting-party of Shoshone In- 
dians. Split into bands of eight or ten each, 
they scoured the whole country on their tough, 
sure-footed ponies. They always hunted on 
horseback, and followed the elk at full speed 
wherever they went. Their method of hunting 
was to organize great drives, the riders strung in 
lines far apart ; they signalled to one another by 
means of willow whistles, with which they also 
imitated the calling of the bull elk, thus tolling 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 231 

the animals to them, or making them betray 
their whereabouts. As they slew whatever they 
could, but by preference cows and calves, and as 
they were very persevering, but also very excit- 
able and generally poor shots, so that they wasted 
much powder, they not only wrought havoc 
among the elk, but also scared the survivors out 
of all the country over which they hunted. 

Day in and day out we plodded on. In a 
hunting trip the days of long monotony in getting 
to the ground, and the days of imrequited toil 
after it has been reached, always far outnumber 
the red-letter days of success. But it is just 
these times of failure that really test the hunter. 
In the long run, common sense and dogged perse- 
verence avail him more than any other qualities. 
The man who does not give up, but hunts steadily 
and resolutely through the spells of bad luck un- 
till the luck turns, is the man who wins success 
in the end. 

After a week at Two-Ocean Pass, we gathered 
our pack-animals one frosty morning, and again 
set off across the mountains. A two days' jaunt 
took us to the summit of Wolverine Pass, near 
Pinyon Peak, beside a little mountain tarn ; each 
morning we fotind its surface skimmed with black 
ice, for the nights were cold. After three or four 
days, we shifted camp to the mouth of Wolverine 
Creek, to get off the hunting-grounds of the In- 



232 The Wilderness Hunter 

dians. We had used up our last elk-meat that 
morning, and when we were within a couple of 
hours' journey of our intended halting-place, 
Woody and I struck off on foot for a hunt. Just 
before sunset we came on three or four elk; a 
spike bull stood for a moment behind some thick 
evergreens a hundred yards off. Guessing at his 
shoulder, I fired, and he fell dead after running 
a few rods. I had broken the luck, after ten 
days of ill success. 

Next morning Woody and I, with the packer, 
rode to where this elk lay. We loaded the meat 
on a pack-horse, and let the packer take both 
the loaded animal and our own saddle-horses 
back to camp, while we made a hiint on foot. 
We went up the steep, forest-clad mountain-side, 
and before we had walked an hour heard two elk 
whistling ahead of us. The woods were open, 
and quite free from undergrowth, and we were 
able to advance noiselessly; there was no wind, 
for the weather was still, clear, and cold. Both 
of the elk were evidently very much excited, an- 
swering each other continually ; they had probably 
been master bulls, but had become so exhausted 
that their rivals had driven them from the herds, 
forcing them to remain in seclusion until they re- 
gained their lost strength. As we crept stealthily 
forward, the calling grew louder and louder, 
until we could hear the grunting sounds with 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 233 

which the challenge of the nearest ended. He 
was in a large wallow, which was also a lick. 
When we were still sixty yards ofE, he heard us, 
and rushed out, but wheeled and stood a moment 
to gaze, puzzled by my buckskin suit. I fired 
into his throat, breaking his neck, and down he 
went in a heap. Rushing in and turning, I called 
to Woody, "He's a twelve-pointer, but the horns 
are small!" As I spoke I heard the roar of the 
challenge of the other bull not two hundred yards 
ahead, as if in defiant answer to my shot. 

Running quietly forward, I speedily caught a 
glimpse of his body. He was behind some fir- 
trees about seventy yards off, and I could not 
see which way he was standing, and so fired into 
the patch of flank which was visible, aiming high, 
to break the back. My aim was true, and the 
huge beast crashed down-hill through the ever- 
greens, pulling himself on his fore legs for fifteen 
or twenty rods, his hind quarters trailing. Rac- 
ing forward, I broke his neck. His antlers were 
the finest I ever got. A couple of whisky- jacks 
appeared at the first crack of the rifle with their 
customary astonishing familiarity and heedless- 
ness of the hunter; they followed the wounded 
bull as he dragged his great carcass down the 
hill, and pounced with ghoulish bloodthirstiness 
on the gouts of blood that were sprinkled over 
the green herbage. 



234 The Wilderness Hunter 

These two bulls lay only a couple of hundred 
yards apart, on a broad game trail, which was as 
well beaten as a good bridle-path. We began to 
skin out the heads ; and as we were finishing we 
heard another bull challenging far up the moun- 
tain. He came nearer and nearer, and as soon 
as we had ended our work we grasped our rifles 
and trotted toward him along the game trail. 
He was very noisy, uttering his loud, singing 
challenge every minute or two. The trail was 
so broad and firm that we walked in perfect 
silence. After going only five or six hundred 
^'•ards, we got very close indeed, and stole for- 
ward on tip-toe, listening to the roaring music. 
The sound came from a steep narrow ravine, to 
one side of the trail, and I walked toward it with 
my rifle at the ready. A slight puff gave the elk 
my wind, and he dashed out of the ravine like a 
deer; but he was only thirty yards off, and my 
bullet went into his shoulder as he passed behind 
a clump of young spruce. I plunged into the 
ravine, scrambled out of it, and raced after him. 
In a minute I saw him standing with drooping 
head, and two more shots finished him. He also 
bore fine antlers. It was a great piece of luck 
to get three such fine bulls at the cost of half a 
day's Hght work; but we had fairly earned them, 
having worked hard for ten days, through rain, 
cold, hunger, and fatigue, to no purpose. That 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 235 

evening my home-coming to camp, with three 
elk-tongues and a brace of ruffed grouse hung at 
my belt, was most happy. 

Next day it snowed, but we brought a pack- 
pony to where the three great bulls lay, and took 
their heads to camp ; the flesh was far too strong 
to be worth taking, for it was just the height of 
the rut. 

This was the end of my hunt ; and a day later 
Hofer and I, with two pack-ponies, made a rapid 
push for the Upper Geyser Basin. We travelled 
fast. The first day was gray and overcast, a cold 
wind blowing strongly in our faces. Toward eve- 
ning we came on a bull elk in a willow thicket ; he 
was on his knees in a hollow, thrashing and beat- 
ing the willows with his antlers. At dusk we 
halted and went into camp, by some small pools 
on the summit of the pass north of Red Mountain. 
The elk were calling all around us. We pitched 
our cozy tent, dragged great stumps for the fire, 
cut evergreen boughs for our beds, watered the 
horses, tethered them to improvised picket-pins 
in a grassy glade, and then set about getting sup- 
per ready. The wind had gone down, and snow 
was falling thick in large, soft flakes; we were 
evidently at the beginning of a heavy snowstorm. 
All night we slept soundly in our snug tent. When 
we arose at dawn there was a foot and a half of 
snow on the ground, and the flakes were falling as 



236 The Wilderness Hunter 

fast as ever. There is no more tedious work than 
striking camp in bad weather ; and it was over two 
hours from the time we rose to the time we started. 
It is sheer misery to untangle picket-Hnes and to 
pack animals when the ropes are frozen ; and by 
the time we had loaded the two shivering, wincing 
pack-ponies, and had bridled and saddled our own 
riding-animals, our hands and feet were numb and 
stiff with cold, though we were really hampered 
by our warm clothing. My horse was a wild, ner- 
vous roan, and as I swung carelessly into the sad- 
dle, he suddenly began to buck before I got my 
right leg over, and threw me ofE. My thumb was 
put out of joint. I pulled it in again, and speedily 
caught my horse in the dead timber. Then I 
treated him as what the cowboys call a "mean 
horse," and mounted him carefully, so as not to 
let him either buck or go over backward. How- 
ever, his preliminary success had inspirited him, 
and a dozen times that day he began to buck, 
usually choosing a down grade, where the snow 
was deep, and there was much fallen timber. 

All day long we pushed steadily through the 
cold, blinding snowstorm. Neither squirrels nor 
rabbits were abroad; and a few Clarke's crows, 
whisky-jacks, and chickadees were the only living 
things we saw. At nightfall, chilled through, we 
reached the Upper Geyser Basin. Here I met a 
party of railroad surveyors and engineers, coming 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 237 

in from their summer's field-work. One of them 
lent me a saddle-horse and a pack-pony, and we 
went on together, breaking our way through the 
snow-choked roads to the Mammoth Hot Springs, 
while Hofer took my own horses back to Ferguson. 
I have described this hunt at length because, 
though I enjoyed it particularly on account of the 
comfort in which we travelled and the beauty 
of the land, yet, in point of success in finding 
and killing game, in value of trophies procured, 
and in its alternations of good and bad luck, 
it may fairly stand as the type of a dozen such 
hunts I have made. Twice I have been much 
more successful; the difference being due to 
sheer luck, as I hunted equally hard in all three 
instances. Thus on this trip I killed and saw 
nothing but elk; yet the other members of the 
party either saw, or saw fresh signs of, not only 
blacktail deer, but sheep, bear, bison, moose, 
cougar, and wolf. Now in 1889 I hunted over 
almost precisely similar country, only farther to 
the northwest, on the boundary between Idaho 
and Montana, and, with the exception of sheep, 
I stumbled on all the animals mentioned, and 
white-goat in addition, so that my bag of twelve 
head actually included eight species — much the 
best bag I ever made, and the only one that could 
really be called out of the common. In 1884, on a 
trip to the Bighorn Mountains, I killed three bear, 



238 The Wilderness Hunter 

six elk, and six deer. In laying in the winter stock 
of meat for my ranch I often far excelled these 
figures as far as mere numbers went ; but on no 
other regular hunting trip, where the quality and 
not the quantity of the game was the prime con- 
sideration, have I ever equalled them; and on 
several where I worked hardest I hardly averaged 
a head a week. The occasional days or weeks of 
phenomenal luck are more than earned by the 
many others where no luck whatever follows the 
very hardest work. Yet, if a man hunts with 
steady resolution, he is apt to strike enough lucky 
days amply to repay him. 

On this Shoshone trip I fired fifty-eight shots. 
In preference to using the knife I generally break 
the neck of an elk which is still struggling ; and I 
fire at one as long as it can stand, preferring to 
waste a few extra bullets, rather than see an occa- 
sional head of game escape. In consequence of 
these two traits the nine elk I got (two running at 
sixty and eighty yards, the others standing, at 
from thirty to a hundred) cost me twenty-three 
bullets; and I missed three shots — all three, it is 
but fair to say, difficult ones. I also cut off the 
heads of seventeen grouse, with twenty-two shots ; 
and killed two ducks with ten shots — fifty-eight in 
all. On the Bighorn trip I used a hundred and 
two cartridges. On no other trip did I use fifty. 

To me, still-hunting elk in the mountains, when 



An Elk-Hunt at Two-Ocean Pass 2 



39 



they are calling, is one of the most attractive of 
sports, not only because of the size and stately 
beauty of the quarry and the grand nature of the 
trophy, but because of the magnificence of the 
scenery, and the stirring, manly, exciting nature 
of the chase itself. It yields more vigorous enjoy- 
ment than does lurking stealthily through the 
grand but gloomy monotony of the marshy wood- 
land where dwells the moose. The climbing 
among the steep forest-clad and glade-strewn 
mountains is just difficult enough thoroughly to 
test soundness in wind and limb, while without 
the heart-breaking fatigue of white-goat hunting. 
The actual grapple with an angry grisly is of course 
far more full of strong, eager pleasure ; but bear- 
hunting is the most uncertain, and usually the 
least productive, of sports. 

As regards strenuous, vigorous work, and pleas- 
urable excitement, the chase of the bighorn alone 
stands higher. But the bighorn, grand beast of 
the chase though he be, is surpassed in size, both 
of body and of horns, by certain of the giant sheep 
of Central Asia; whereas the wapiti is not only 
the most stately and beautiful of American game 
— far more so than the bison and moose, his only 
rivals in size — but is also the noblest of the stag 
kind throughout the world. Whoever kills him 
has killed the chief of his race ; for he stands far 
above his brethren of Asia and Europe. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE moose; the beast of the woodland 

THE moose is the giant of all deer ; and many 
hunters esteem it the noblest of American 
game. Beyond question, there are few 
trophies more prized than the huge shovel horns 
of this strange dweller in the cold northland forests. 

I shot my first moose '^fter making several fruit- 
less hunting trips with this special game in view. 
The season I finally succeeded, it was only after 
having hunted two or three weeks in vain among 
the Bitter Root Mountains and the ranges lying 
southeast of them. 

I began about the first of September by making 
a trial with my old hunting friend, Willis. We 
speedily found a country where there were moose, 
but of the animals themselves we never caught a 
glimpse. We tried to kill them by hunting in the 
same manner that we hunted elk; that is, by 
choosing a place where there was sign, and going 
carefully through it against or across the wind. 
However, this plan failed; though at that very 
time we succeeded in killing elk in this way, de- 
voting one or two days to their pursuit. There 

240 



The Moose 241 

were both elk and moose in the country, but they 
were usually found in different kinds of ground, 
though often close alongside one another. The 
former went in herds, the cows, calves, and year- 
lings by themselves, and they roamed through the 
higher and more open forests, well up towards 
timber line. The moose, on the contrary, were 
found singly or in small parties, composed, at the 
outside, of a bull, a cow, and her young of two 
years ; for the moose is practically monogamous, 
in strong contrast to the highly polygamous wapiti 
and caribou. 

The moose did not seem to care much whether 
they lived among the summits of the mountains 
or not, so long as they got the right kind of country ; 
for they were much more local in their distribution, 
and at this season less given to wandering than 
their kin with round horns. What they wished 
was a cool, swampy region of very dense growth ; 
in the main chains of the northern Rockies even 
the valleys are high enough to be cold. Of course 
many of the moose lived on the wooded summits 
of the lower ranges ; and most of them came down 
lower in winter than in summer, following about 
a fortnight after the elk ; but if in a large tract of 
woods the cover was dense and the ground marshy, 
though it was in a valley no higher than the herds 
of the ranchmen grazed, or perchance even in 
the immediate neighborhood of a small frontier 

VOL. I. — 16. 



242 The Wilderness Hunter 

hamlet, then it might be chosen by some old bull 
who wished to lie in seclusion till his horns were 
grown, or by some cow with a calf to raise. Before 
settlers came to this high mountain region of west- 
em Montana, a moose would often thus live in an 
isolated marshy tract surrounded by open country. 
They grazed throughout the summer on marsh 
plants, notably lily stems, and nibbled at the tops 
of the very tall natural hay of the meadows. The 
legs of the beast are too long and the neck too 
short to allow it to graze habitually on short 
grass ; yet in the early spring, when greedy for the 
tender blades of young, green marsh grass, the 
moose will often shuffle down on its knees to get 
at them, and it will occasionally perform the same 
feat to get a mouthful or two of snow in winter. 

The moose which lived in isolated, exposed lo- 
caHties were speedily killed or driven away after 
the incoming of settlers ; and at the time that we 
hunted we found no sign of them until we reached 
the region of continuous forest. Here, in a fort- 
night's hunting, we found as much sign as we 
wished, and plenty of it fresh; but the animals 
themselves we not only never saw, but we never 
so much as heard. Often after hours of careful 
still-hunting or cautious tracking, we found the 
footprints deep in the soft earth, showing where 
our quarry had winded or heard us, and had noise- 
lessly slipped away from the danger. It is aston- 



The Moose 243 

ishing how quietly a moose can steal through the 
woods if it wishes : and it has what is to the hun- 
ter a very provoking habit of making a half or 
three quarters circle before lying down, and then 
crouching with its head so turned that it can surely 
perceive any pursuer who may follow its trail. We 
tried every method to outwit the beasts. We at- 
tempted to track them; we beat through likely 
spots; sometimes we merely "sat on a log" and 
awaited events, by a drinking hole, meadow, mud 
wallow, or other such place (a course of procedure 
which often works well in still-hunting) ; but all 
in vain. 

Our main difficulty lay in the character of the 
woods which the moose haunted. They were 
choked and tangled to the last degree, consisting 
of a mass of thick-growing conifers, with dead 
timber strewn in every direction, and young 
growth filling the spaces between the trunks. We 
could not see twenty yards ahead of us, and it was 
almost impossible to walk without making a 
noise. Elk were occasionally found in these same 
places; but usually they frequented more open 
timber, where the hunting was beyond comparison 
easier. Perhaps more experienced htmters would 
have killed their game ; though in such cover the 
best tracker and still-hunter alive cannot always 
reckon on success with really wary animals. But 
be this as it may, we, at any rate, were completely 



244 The Wilderness Hunter 

baffled, and I began to think that this moose-hunt, 
Hke all my former ones, was doomed to end in 
failure. 

However, a few days later I met a crabbed old 
trapper named Hank Griffin, who was going after 
beaver in the mountains, and who told me that if 
I would come with him he would show me moose. 
I jumped at the chance, and he proved as good as 
his word; though for the first two trials my ill 
luck did not change. 

At the time that it finally did change we had at 
last reached a place where the moose were on fa- 
vorable ground. A high, marshy valley stretched 
for several miles between two rows of stony moun- 
tains, clad with a forest of rather small fir-trees. 
This valley was covered with reeds, alders, and 
rank grass, and studded with little willow-bor- 
dered ponds and island-Hke clumps of spruce and 
graceful tamaracks. 

Having surveyed the ground and found moose 
sign the preceding afternoon, we were up betimes 
in the cool morning to begin our hunt. Before 
sunrise we were posted on a rocky spur of the foot- 
hills, behind a mask of evergreens; ourselves un- 
seen, we overlooked all the valley, and we knew we 
could see any animal which might be either feed- 
ing away from cover or on its journey homeward 
from its feeding-ground to its day-bed. 

As it grew lighter we scanned the valley with 



The Moose 245 

increasing care and eagerness. The sun rose be- 
hind us ; and almost as soon as it was up we made 
out some large beast moving among the dwarf 
willows beside a little lake half a mile in our front. 
In a few minutes the thing walked out where the 
bushes were thinner, and we saw that it was a 
young bull moose browsing on the willow tops. 
He had evidently nearly finished his breakfast, 
and he stood idly for some moments, now and 
then lazily cropping a mouthful of twig tips. Then 
he walked off with great strides in a straight line 
across the marsh, splashing among the wet water- 
plants, and ploughing through boggy spaces with 
the indifference begotten of vast strength and legs 
longer than those of any other animal on this con- 
tinent. At times he entered beds of reeds which 
hid him from view, though their surging and bend- 
ing showed the wake of his passage; at other 
times he walked through meadows of tall grass, 
the withered yellow stalks rising to his flanks, 
while his body loomed above them, glistening 
black and wet in the level sunbeams. Once he 
stopped for a few moments on a rise of dry groimd, 
seemingly to enjoy the heat of the young sun ; he 
stood motionless, save that his ears were continu- 
ally pricked, and his head sometimes slightly 
turned, showing that even in this remote land he 
was on the alert. Once, with a somewhat awk- 
ward motion, he reached his hind leg forward 



246 The Wilderness Hunter 

to scratch his neck. Then he walked forward 
again into the marsh ; where the water was quite 
deep, he broke into the long, stretching, springy 
trot, which forms the characteristic gait of his 
kind, churning the marsh water into foam. He 
held his head straight forwards, the antlers resting 
on his shoulders. 

After a while he reached a spruce island, through 
which he walked to and fro ; but evidently could 
find therein no resting-place quite to his mind, for 
he soon left and went on to another. Here after a 
little wandering he chose a point where there was 
some thick young growth, which hid him from 
view when he lay down, though not when he stood. 
After some turning he settled himself in his bed 
just as a steer would. 

He could not have chosen a spot better suited 
for us. He was nearly at the edge of the morass, 
the open space between the spruce clump where 
he was lying and the rocky foothills being com- 
paratively dry and not much over a couple of hun- 
dred yards broad ; while some sixty yards from it, 
and between it and the hills, was a little hum- 
mock, tufted with firs, so as to afford us just the 
cover we needed. Keeping back from the edge of 
the morass we were able to walk upright through 
the forest, until we got to the point where he was 
lying in a line with this little hummock. We then 
dropped on our hands and knees, and crept over 



The Moose 247 

the soft, wet sward, where there was nothing to 
make a noise. Wherever the ground rose at all we 
crawled flat on our bellies. The air was still, for it 
was a very calm morning. 

At last we reached the hummock, and I got into 
position for a shot, taking a final look at my faith- 
ful 45-90 Winchester to see that all was in order. 
Peering cautiously through the shielding ever- 
greens, I at first could not make out where the 
moose was lying, until my eye was caught by the 
motion of his big ears, as he occasionally flapped 
them lazily forward. Even then I could not see 
his outline ; but I knew where he was, and having 
pushed my rifle forward on the moss, I snapped a 
dry twig to make him rise. My veins were thrill- 
ing, and my heart beat with that eager, fierce ex- 
citement known only to the hunter of big game, 
and forming one of the keenest and strongest of the 
many pleasures which with him go to make up 
"the wild joy of living." 

As the sound of the snapping twig smote his 
ears the moose rose nimbly to his feet, with a 
lightness on which one would not have reckoned 
in a beast so hea\'y of body. He stood broadside 
to me for a moment, his ungainly head slightly 
turned, while his ears twitched and his nostrils 
snuffed the air. Drawing a fine bead against his 
black hide, behind his shoulder and two thirds 
of his body's depth below his shaggy withers, 



248 The Wilderness Hunter 

I pressed the trigger. He neither flinched nor 
reeled, but started with his regular ground-cover- 
ing trot through the spruces; yet I knew he was 
mine, for the light blood sprang from both of his 
nostrils, and he fell dying on his side before he had 
gone thirty rods. 

Later in the fall I was again hunting among the 
lofty ranges which continue towards the south- 
east the chain of the Bitter Root, between Idaho 
and Montana. There were but two of us, and we 
were travelling very light, each having but one 
pack-pony and the saddle animal he bestrode. We 
were high among the mountains, and followed 
no regular trail. Hence our course was often one 
of extreme difficulty. Occasionally, we took our 
animals through the forest near timber line, where 
the slopes were not too steep ; again we threaded 
our way through a line of glades, or skirted the 
foothills, in an open, park country; and now and 
then we had to cross stretches of tangled mountain 
forest, making but a few miles a day, at the cost 
of incredible toil, and accomplishing even this 
solely by virtue of the wonderful docility and sure- 
footedness of the ponies, and of my companion's 
skill with the axe and thorough knowledge of 
woodcraft. 

Late one cold afternoon we came out in a high 
alpine valley in which there was no sign of any 
man's having ever been before us. Down its mid- 



The Moose 249 

die ran a clear brook. On each side was a belt of 
thick spruce forest, covering the lower flanks of 
the mountains. The trees came down in points 
and isolated clumps to the brook, the banks of 
which were thus bordered with open glades, ren- 
dering the travelling easy and rapid. 

Soon after starting up this valley we entered a 
beaver-meadow of considerable size. It was cov- 
ered with lush, rank grass, and the stream wound 
through it rather sluggishly in long curves, which 
were fringed by a thick growth of dwarfed willows. 
In one or two places it broadened into small ponds, 
bearing a few lily-pads. This meadow had been 
all tramped up by moose. Trails led hither and 
thither through the grass, the willow twigs were 
cropped off, and the muddy banks of the little 
black ponds were indented by hoof-marks. Evi- 
dently most of the lilies had been plucked. The 
footprints were unmistakable; a moose's foot is 
longer and slimmer than a caribou's, while on the 
other hand it is much larger than an elk's, and a 
longer oval in shape. 

Most of the sign was old, this high alpine mea- 
dow, surrounded by snow mountains, having 
clearly been a favorite resort for moose in the 
summer; but some enormous, fresh tracks told 
that one or more old bulls were still frequenting 
the place. 

The light was already fading, and, of course. 



250 The Wilderness Hunter 

we did not wish to camp where we were, because 
we would then certainly scare the moose. Ac- 
cordingly we pushed up the valley for another 
mile, through an open forest, the ground being 
quite free from underbrush and dead timber, and 
covered with a carpet of thick moss, in which the 
feet sank noiselessly. Then we came to another 
beaver-meadow, which offered fine feed for the 
ponies. On its edge we hastily pitched camp, just 
at dusk. We tossed down the packs in a dry 
grove, close to the brook, and turned the tired 
ponies loose in the meadow, hobbling the little 
mare that carried the bell. The ground was 
smooth. We threw a cross-pole from one to the 
other of two young spruces, which happened to 
stand handily, and from it stretched and pegged 
out a piece of canvas, which we were using as a 
shelter tent. Beneath this we spread our bedding, 
laying under it the canvas sheets in which it had 
been wrapped. There was still bread left over 
from yesterday's baking, and in a few moments 
the kettle was boiling and the frying-pan sizzling, 
while one of us skinned and cut into suitable pieces 
two grouse we had knocked over on our march. 
For fear of frightening the moose we built but a 
small fire, and went to bed soon after supper, 
being both tired and cold. Fortunately, what little 
breeze there was blew up the valley. 

At dawn I was awake, and crawled out of my 



The Moose 251 

buffalo bag, shivering and yawning. My com- 
panion still slumbered heavily. White frost cov- 
ered whatever had been left outside. The cold 
was sharp, and I hurriedly slipped a pair of stout 
moccasins on my feet, drew on my gloves and cap, 
and started through the ghostly woods for the 
meadow where we had seen the moose sign. The 
tufts of grass were stiff with frost; black ice 
skimmed the edges and quiet places of the little 
brook. 

I walked slowly, it being difficult not to make a 
noise by cracking sticks or brushing against trees 
in the gloom; but the forest was so open that it 
favored me. When I reached the edge of the 
beaver-meadow it was light enough to shoot, 
though the front sight still glimmered indistinctly. 
Streaks of cold red showed that the stm would 
soon rise. 

Before leaving the shelter of the last spruces I 
halted to listen ; and almost immediately heard a 
curious splashing sound from the middle of the 
meadow, where the brook broadened into small 
willow-bordered pools. I knew at once that a 
moose was in one of these pools, wading about and 
pulling up the water-lilies by seizing their slippery 
stems in his lips, pltmging his head deep under 
water to do so. The moose love to feed in this 
way in the hot months, when they spend all the 
time they can in the water, feeding or lying down ; 



252 The Wilderness Hunter 

nor do they altogether abandon the habit even 
when the weather is so cold that icicles form in 
their shaggy coats. 

Crouching, I stole noiselessly along the edge of 
the willow thicket. The stream twisted through 
it from side to side in zigzags, so that every few 
rods I got a glimpse down a lane of black water. 
In a minute I heard a slight splashing near me; 
and on passing the next point of bushes I saw the 
shadowy outlines of the moose's hindquarters, 
standing in a bend of the water. In a moment 
he walked onwards, disappearing. I ran forward 
a couple of rods, and then turned in among the 
willows, to reach the brook where it again bent 
back towards me. The splashing in the water, 
and the rustling of the moose's body against the 
frozen twigs, drowned the little noise made by my 
moccasined feet. 

I strode out on the bank at the lower end of a 
long narrow pool of water, dark and half frozen. 
In this pool, half way down and facing me, but a 
score of yards off, stood the mighty marsh beast, 
strange and uncouth in look as some monster sur- 
viving over from the Pliocene. His vast bulk 
loomed black and vague in the dim gray dawn; 
his huge antlers stood out sharply; columns of 
steam rose from his nostrils. For several seconds 
he fronted me motionless ; then he began to turn, 
slowly, and as if he had a stiff neck. When quarter 



The Moose 253 

way round I fired into his shoulder; whereat he 
reared and bounded on the bank with a great leap, 
vanishing in the willows. Through these I heard 
him crash like a whirlwind for a dozen rods ; then 
down he fell, and when I reached the spot he had 
ceased to struggle. The ball had gone through his 
heart. 

When a moose is thus surprised at close quar- 
ters, it will often stand at gaze for a moment or two, 
and then turn stiffly around until headed in the 
right direction; once thus headed aright it starts 
off with extraordinary speed. 

The flesh of the moose is very good; though 
some deem it coarse. Old hunters, who always 
like rich, greasy food, rank a moose's nose with a 
beaver's tail as the chief of backwood delicacies; 
personally, I never liked either. The hide of the 
moose, like the hide of the elk, is of very poor 
quality, much inferior to ordinary buckskin; 
caribou hide is the best of all, especially when 
used as webbing for snow-shoes. 

The moose is very fond of frequenting swampy 
woods throughout the summer, and indeed late 
into the fall. These swampy woods are not neces- 
sarily in the lower valleys, some being found very 
high among the mountains. By preference, it 
haunts those containing lakes, where it can find 
the long lily-roots of which it is so fond, and where 
it can escape the torment of the mosquitoes and 



254 The Wilderness Hunter 

deer-flies by lying completely submerged save for 
its nostrils. It is a bold and good swimmer, 
readily crossing lakes of large size; but it is of 
course easily slain if discovered by canoe-men 
while in the water. It travels well through bogs, 
but not as well as the caribou ; and it will not ven- 
ture on ice at all if it can possibly avoid it. 

After the rut begins the animals roam every- 
where through the woods; and where there are 
hardwood forests the winter-yard is usually made 
among them, on high ground, away from the 
swamps. In the mountains the deep snows drive 
the moose, like all other game, down to the lower 
valleys, in hard winters. In the summer it occa- 
sionally climbs to the very summits of the wooded 
ranges, to escape the flies; and it is said that in 
certain places where wolves are plenty the cows 
retire to the tops of the mountains to calve. More 
often, however, they select some patch of very 
dense cover, in a swamp or by a lake, for this pur- 
pose. Their ways of life of course vary with the 
nature of the country they frequent. In the tower- 
ing chains of the Rockies, clad in sombre and un- 
broken evergreen forests, their habits, in regard 
to winter and summer homes, and choice of places 
of seclusion for cows with young calves and bulls 
growing their antlers, differ from those of their 
kind which haunt the comparatively low, hilly, 
lake-studded country of Maine and Nova Scotia, 



The Moose 255 

where the forests are of birch, beech, and maple, 
mixed with the pine, spruce, and hemlock. 

The moose, being usually monogamous, is never 
found in great herds like the wapiti and caribou. 
Occasionally a troop of fifteen or twenty individ- 
uals may be seen, but this is rare ; more often it 
is found singly, in pairs, or in family parties, com- 
posed of a bull, a cow, and two or more calves and 
yearlings. In yarding, two or more such families 
may unite to spend the winter together in an im- 
usually attractive locality; and during the rut 
many bulls are sometimes found together, perhaps 
following the trail of a cow in single file. 

In the fall, winter, and early spring, and in cer- 
tain places during summer, the moose feeds prin- 
cipally by browsing, though always willing to 
vary its diet by mosses, lichens, fungi, and ferns. 
In the eastern forests, with their abundance of 
hardwood, the birch, maple, and moose-wood 
form its favorite food. In the Rocky Mountains, 
where the forests are almost purely evergreen, it 
feeds on such willows, alders, and aspens as it can 
find, and also, when pressed by necessity, on bal- 
sam, fir, spruce, and very young pine. It peels 
the bark between its hard palate and sharp lower 
teeth, to a height of seven or eight feet; these 
"peelings" form conspicuous moose signs. It 
crops the juicy, budding twigs and stem tops to 
the same height; and if the tree is too tall it 



256 The Wilderness Hunter 

"rides" it, that is, straddles the slender trunk 
with its fore legs, pushing it over and walking up 
it until the desired branches are within reach. No 
beast is more destructive to the young growth of 
a forest than the moose. Where much persecuted, 
it feeds in the late evening, early morning, and by 
moonlight. Where rarely disturbed, it passes the 
day much as cattle do, alternately resting and 
feeding for two or three hours at a time. 

Young moose, when caught, are easily tamed, 
and are very playful, delighting to gallop to and 
fro, kicking, striking, butting, and occasionally 
making grotesque faces. As they grow old they 
are apt to become dangerous, and even their play 
takes the form of a mock fight. Some lumbermen 
I knew on the Aroostook, in Maine, once captured 
a young moose, and put it in a pen of logs. A few 
days later they captured another, somewhat 
smaller, and put it in the same pen, thinking the 
first would be grateful at having a companion. 
But if it was it dissembled its feelings, for it 
promptly fell on the unfortunate newcomer and 
killed it before it could be rescued. 

During the rut the bulls seek the cows far and 
wide, uttering continually throughout the night a 
short, loud roar, which can be heard at a distance 
of four or five miles ; the cows now and then re- 
spond with low, plaintive bellows. The bulls also 
thrash the tree-trunks with their horns, and paw 



The Moose 257 

big holes in soft ground; and when two rivals 
come together at this season they fight with the 
most desperate fury. It is chiefly in these battles 
with one another that the huge antlers are used ; 
in contending with other foes they strike terrible 
blows with their fore hoofs, and also sometimes 
lash out behind like a horse. The bear occasion- 
ally makes a prey of the moose; the cougar is a 
more dangerous enemy in the few districts where 
both animals are found at all plentifully ; but next 
to man its most dreaded foe is the big timber wolf, 
that veritable scourge of all animals of the deer 
kind. Against all of these the moose defends it- 
self valiantly ; a cow with a calf and a rutting bull 
being especially dangerous opponents. In deep 
snows through which the great deer flounders 
while its adversary runs lightly on the crust, a 
single wolf may overcome and slaughter a big bull 
moose; but with a fair chance, no one or two 
wolves would be a match for it. Desperate com- 
bats take place before a small pack of wolves can 
master the shovel-horned quarry, unless it is taken 
at a hopeless disadvantage; and in these battles 
the prowess of the moose is shown by the fact that 
it is no unusual thing for it to kill one or more of 
the ravenous throng; generally, by a terrific blow 
of the fore leg, smashing a wolf's skull or breaking 
its back. I have known of several instances of 
wolves being found dead, having perished in this 



258 The Wilderness Hunter 

manner. Still the battle usually ends the other 
way, the wolves being careful to make the attack 
with the odds in their favor; and even a small 
pack of the ferocious brutes will in a single winter 
often drive the moose completely out of a given 
district. Both cougar and bear generally reckon 
on taking the moose unawares, when they jump 
on it. In one case that came to my knowledge a 
black bear was killed by a cow moose whose calf 
he had attacked. 

In the northeast a favorite method of hunting 
the moose is by "calling" the bulls in the rutting 
season, at dawn or nightfah ; the caller imitating 
their cries through a birch-bark trumpet. If the 
animals are at all wary, this kind of sport can 
only be carried on in still weather, as the approach- 
ing bull always tries to get the wind of the caller. 
It is also sometimes slain by fire-hunting, from a 
canoe, as the deer are killed in the Adirondacks. 
This, however, is but an ignoble sport ; and to kill 
the animal while it is swimming in a lake is worse. 
However, there is sometimes a spice of excitement 
even in these unworthy methods of the chase ; for 
a truculent moose will do its best, with hoofs and 
horns, to upset the boat. 

The true way to kill the noble beast, however, is 
by fair still-hunting. There is no grander sport 
than still-hunting the moose, whether in the vast 
pine and birch forests of the northeast, or among 



The Moose 259 

the stupendous mountain masses of the Rockies. 
The moose has wonderfully keen nose and ears, 
though its eyesight is not remarkable. Most hunt- 
ers assert that he is the wariest of all game, and 
the most difficult to kill. I have never been quite 
satisfied that this was so ; it seems to me that the 
nature of the ground wherein it dwells helps it 
even more than do its own sharp senses. It is true 
that I made many trips in vain before killing my 
first moose ; but then I had to hunt through tan- 
gled timber, where I could hardly move a step 
without noise, and could never see thirty yards 
ahead. If moose were found in open park-like 
forests, like those where I first killed elk, on the 
Bighorn Mountains, or among brushy coulies and 
bare hills, hke the Little Missouri Bad Lands, 
where I first killed blacktail deer, I doubt whether 
they would prove especially difficult animals to 
bag. My own experience is much too limited to 
allow me to speak with any certainty on the 
point; but it is borne out by what more skilled 
hunters have told me. In the Big Hole Basin, in 
southwest Montana, moose were quite plentiful in 
the late 'seventies. Two or three of the old set- 
tlers, whom I know as veteran hunters and trust- 
worthy men, have told me that in those times the 
moose were often found in very accessible locali- 
ties; and that when such was the case they were 
quite as easily killed as elk. In fact, when run 



26o The Wilderness Hunter 

across by accident they frequently showed a certain 
clumsy slowness of apprehension which amounted 
to downright stupidity. One of the most suc- 
cessful moose-hunters I know is Colonel Cecil 
Clay, of the Department of Law, in Washington ; 
he it was who killed the moose composing the fine 
group mounted by Mr. Hornaday, in the National 
Museum. Colonel Clay lost his right arm in the 
Civil War ; but is an expert rifle shot nevertheless, 
using a short, light forty-four calibre old-style 
Winchester carbine. With this weapon he has 
killed over a score of moose, by fair still-hunting ; 
and he tells me that on similar groimd he con- 
siders it if anything rather less easy to still-hunt 
and kill a whitetail deer than it is to kill a moose. 

My friend Colonel James Jones killed two moose 
in a day in northwestern Wyoming, not far from 
the Tetons ; he was alone when he shot them, and 
did not find them especially wary. Ordinarily, 
moose are shot at fairly close range ; but another 
friend of mine, Mr. E. P. Rogers, once dropped 
one with a single bullet at a distance of nearly 
three hundred yards. This happened by Bridger's 
Lake, near Two-Ocean Pass. 

The moose has a fast walk, and its ordinary gait 
when going at any speed is a slashing trot. Its long 
legs give it a wonderful stride, enabling it to clear 
down timber and high obstacles of all sorts with- 
out altering its pace. It also leaps well. If much 



The Moose 261 

pressed or startled it breaks into an awkward gal- 
lop, which is quite fast for a few hundred yards, 
but which speedily tires it out. After being dis- 
turbed by the hunter a moose usually trots a long 
distance before halting. 

One thing which renders the chase of the moose 
particularly interesting is the fact that there is in 
it on rare occasions a spice of peril. Under certain 
circumstances it may be called dangerous quarry, 
being, properly speaking, the only animal of the 
deer kind which ever fairly deserves the title. In 
a hand-to-hand grapple an elk or caribou, or even 
under exceptional circumstances a blacktail or a 
whitetail, may show itself an ugly antagonist ; and 
indeed a maddened elk may for a moment take the 
offensive; but the moose is the only one of the 
tribe with which this attitude is at all common. 
In bodily strength and capacity to do harm it sur- 
passes the elk ; and in temper it is far more savage 
and more apt to show fight when assailed by man ; 
exactly as the elk in these respects surpasses the 
common deer. Two hunters with whom I was 
well acquainted once wintered between the Wind 
River Mountains and the Three Tetons, many 
years ago, in the days of the buffalo. They lived 
on game, killing it on snow-shoes — for the most 
part wapiti and deer, but also bison, and one 
moose, though they saw others. The wapiti bulls 
kept their antlers two months longer than the 



262 The Wilderness Hunter 

moose; nevertheless, when chased they rarely- 
made an effort to use them, while the hornless 
moose displayed far more pugnacity, and also ran 
better through the deep snow. The winter was 
very severe, the snows were heavy and the crusts 
hard ; so that the hunters had little trouble in over- 
taking their game, although — being old mountain- 
men, and not hide-hunters — they killed only what 
was needed. Of course, in such hunting they came 
very close to the harried game, usually after a 
chase of from twenty minutes to three hours. 
They found that the ordinary deer would scarcely 
charge under any circumstances ; that among the 
wapiti it was only now and then that individuals 
would turn upon their pursuers — though they 
sometimes charged boldly ; but that both the bison 
and especially the moose when worried and ap- 
proached too near, would often turn to bay and 
make charge after charge in the most resolute man- 
ner, so that they had to be approached with some 
caution. 

Under ordinary conditions, however, there is 
very little danger, indeed, of a moose charging. A 
charge does not take place once in a himdred times 
when the moose is killed by fair still-hunting ; and 
it is altogether exceptional for those who assail 
them from boats or canoes to be put in jeopardy. 
Even a cow moose, with her calf, will run if she 
has the chance; and a rutting bull will do the 



The Moose 263 

same. Such a bull when wounded may walk 
slowly forward, grunting savagely, stamping with 
his fore feet, and slashing the bushes with his 
antlers ; but, if his antagonist is any distance off, 
he rarely actually runs at him. Yet there are now 
and then found moose prone to attack on slight 
provocation ; for these great deer differ as widely 
as men in courage and ferocity. Occasionally a 
hunter is charged in the fall when he has lured the 
game to him by calling, or when he has wounded 
it after a stalk. In one well-authenticated in- 
stance which was brought to my attention, a settler 
on the left bank of the St. John's, in New Bruns- 
wick, was tramped to death by a bull moose which 
he had called to him and wounded. A New Yorker 
of my acquaintance. Dr. Merrill, was charged 
under rather peculiar circumstances. He stalked 
and mortally wounded a bull which promptly ran 
towards him. Between them was a gully in which 
it disappeared. Immediately afterwards, as he 
thought, it reappeared on his side of the gully, and 
with a second shot he dropped it. Walking for- 
ward, he found to his astonishment that with his 
second bullet he had killed a cow moose ; the bull 
lay dying in the gully, out of which he had scared 
the cow by his last rush. 

However, speaking broadly, the danger to the 
still -hunter engaged in one of the legitimate 
methods of the chase is so small that it may be 



264 The Wilderness Hunter 

disregarded ; for he usually kills his game at some 
little distance, while the moose, as a rule, only at- 
tacks if it has been greatly worried and angered, 
and if its pursuer is close at hand. When a moose 
is surprised and shot at by a hunter some way off, 
its one thought is of flight. Hence, the hunters 
who are charged by moose are generally those who 
follow them during the late winter and early spring, 
when the animals have yarded and can be killed 
on snow-shoes, — by "crusting," as it is termed, — 
a very destructive and often a very unsportsman- 
like species of chase. 

If the snowfall is very light, moose do not yard 
at all; but in a hard winter they begin to make 
their yards in December. A "yard" is not, as 
some people seem to suppose, a trampled-down 
space, with definite boundaries; the term merely 
denotes the spot which a moose has chosen for its 
winter home, choosing it because it contains plenty 
of browse in the shape of young trees and saplings, 
and perhaps also because it is sheltered to some 
extent from the fiercest winds and heaviest snow- 
drifts. The animal travels to and fro across this 
space in straight lines and irregular circles after 
food, treading in its own footsteps, where practic- 
able. As the snow steadily deepens, these lines of 
travel become beaten paths. There results finally 
a space half a mile square — sometimes more, some- 
times very much less, according to the lay of the 



The Moose 265 

land, and the number of moose yarding together 
— where the deep snow is seamed in every direc- 
tion by a network of narrow paths along which a 
moose can travel at speed, its back level with the 
snow round about. Sometimes, when moose are 
very plenty, many of these yards lie so close to- 
gether that the beasts can readily make their way 
from one to another. When such is the case, the 
most expert snow-shoer, under the most favorable 
conditions, cannot overtake them, for they can 
then travel very fast through the paths, keeping 
their gait all day. In the early decades of the 
present century, the first settlers in Aroostook 
County, Maine, while moose-hunting in winter, 
were frequently baffled in this manner. 

When hunters approach an isolated yard the 
moose immediately leave it and run off through 
the snow. If there is no crust, and if their long 
legs can reach the ground, the snow itself impedes 
them but little, because of their vast strength and 
endurance. Snowdrifts, which render an ordinary 
deer absolutely helpless, and bring even an elk to 
a standstill, offer no impediment whatever to a 
moose. If, as happens very rarely, the loose snow 
is of such depth that even the stilt-like legs of the 
moose cannot touch solid earth, it flounders and 
struggles forward for a little time, and then sinks 
exhausted ; for a caribou is the only large animal 
which can travel under such conditions. If there 



266 The Wilderness Hunter 

be a crust, even though the snow is not remark- 
ably deep, the labor of the moose is vastly in- 
creased, as it breaks through at every step, cutting 
its legs and exhausting itself. A caribou, on the 
other hand, will go across a crust as well as a man 
on snow-shoes, and can never be caught by the 
latter, save under altogether exceptional conditions 
of snowfall and thaw. 

" Crusting," or following game on snow-shoes, is, 
as the name implies, almost always practised after 
the middle of February, when thaws begin, and the 
snow crusts on top. The conditions for success in 
crusting moose and deer are very different. A 
crust through which a moose would break at every 
stride may carry a running deer without mishap ; 
while the former animal would trot at ease through 
drifts in which the latter would be caught as if in 
a quicksand. 

Hunting moose on snow, therefore, may be, and 
very often is, mere butchery ; and because of this 
possibility or probability, and also because of the 
fact that it is by far the most destructive kind of 
hunting, and is carried on at a season when the 
bulls are hornless and the cows heavy with calf, 
it is rigidly and properly forbidden wherever there 
are good game laws. Yet this kind of hunting 
may also be carried on under circumstances which 
render it if not a legitimate, yet a most exciting 
and manly sport, only to be followed by men of 



The Moose 267 

tried courage, hardihood, and skill. This is not 
because it ever necessitates any skill whatever in 
the use of the rifle, or any particular knowledge of 
hunting-craft; but because under the conditions 
spoken of, the hunter must show great endurance 
and resolution, and must be an adept in the use of 
snow-shoes. 

It all depends upon the depth of the snow and 
the state of the crust. If when the snow is very 
deep there comes a thaw, and if it then freezes 
hard, the moose are overtaken and killed with 
ease; for the crust cuts their legs, they sink to 
their bellies at every plunge, and speedily become 
so worn out that they can no longer keep ahead of 
any man who is even moderately skilful in the use 
of snow-shoes; though they do not, as deer so 
often do, sink exhausted after going a few rods 
from their yard. Under such circumstances a few 
hardy hunters or settlers, who are perfectly reck- 
less in slaughtering game, may readily kill all the 
moose in a district. It is a kind of hunting which 
just suits the ordinary settler, who is hardy and 
enduring, but knows little of hunting-craft proper. 

If the snow is less deep, or the crust not so heavy, 
the moose may travel for scores of miles before it 
is overtaken; and this even though the crust be 
strong enough to bear a man wearing snow-shoes 
without breaking. The chase then involves the 
most exhausting fatigue. Moreover, it can be 



268 The Wilderness Hunter 

carried on only by those who are very skilful in 
the use of snow-shoes. These snow-shoes are of two 
kinds. In the northeast, and in the most tangled 
forests of the northwest, the webbed snow-shoes 
are used ; on the bare mountain-sides, and in the 
open forests of the Rockies, the long, narrow 
wooden skees or Norwegian snow-skates are pre- 
ferred, as upon them men can travel much faster, 
though they are less handy in thick timber. Hav- 
ing donned his snow-shoes and struck the trail of a 
moose, the hunter may have to follow it three 
days if the snow is of only ordinary depth, with a 
moderate crust. He shuffles across the snow with- 
out halt while daylight lasts, and lies down where- 
ever he happens to be when night strikes him, 
probably with a little frozen bread as his only 
food. The hunter thus goes through inordinate 
labor, and suffers from exposure ; not infrequently 
his feet are terribly cut by the thongs of the snow- 
shoes, and become sore and swollen, causing great 
pain. When overtaken after such a severe chase, 
the moose is usually so exhausted as to be unable 
to make any resistance; in all likelihood it has 
run itself to a standstill. Accordingly, the quality 
of the firearms makes but little difference in this 
kind of hunting. Many of the most famous old 
moose-hunters of Maine, in the long past days, 
before the Civil War, when moose were plenty 
there, used what were known as "three-dollar'* 



The Moose 269 

guns; light, single-barrelled smooth-bores. One 
whom I knew used a flint-lock musket, a relic of 
the War of 181 2. Another in the course of an 
exhausting three days' chase lost the lock of his 
cheap percussion-cap gun ; and when he overtook 
the moose he had to explode the cap by hammer- 
ing it with a stone. 

It is in "crusting," when the chase has lasted 
but a comparatively short time, that moose most 
frequently show fight ; for they are not cast into 
a state of wild panic by a sudden and unlooked-for 
attack by a man who is a long distance from them, 
but, on the contrary, after being worried and 
irritated, are approached very near by foes from 
whom they have been fleeing for hours. Never- 
theless, in the majority of cases even crusted 
moose make not the slightest attempt at retalia- 
tion. If the chase has been very long, or if the 
depth of the snow and character of the crust are ex- 
ceptionally disadvantageous to them, they are so 
utterly done out, when overtaken, that they can- 
not make a struggle, and may even be killed with 
an axe. I know of at least five men who have 
thus killed crusted moose with an axe ; one in the 
Rocky Moimtains, one in Minnesota, three in 
Maine. 

But in ordinary snow a man who should thus 
attempt to kill a moose would merely jeopardize 
his own life ; and it is not an uncommon thing for 



270 The Wilderness Hunter 

chased moose, when closely approached by their 
pursuers, even when the latter carry guns and are 
expert snow-shoers, to charge them with such 
ferocity as to put them in much peril. A brother 
of one of my cow-hands, a man from Maine, was 
once nearly killed by a cow-moose. She had been 
in a yard with her last year's calf when started. 
After two or three hours' chase he overtook them. 
They were travelling in single file, the cow break- 
ing her path through the snow, while the calf 
followed close behind, and in his nervousness some- 
times literally ran up on her. The man trotted 
close alongside; but, before he could fire, the old 
cow spun round and charged him, her mane bris- 
tling and her green eyes snapping with rage. It 
happened that just there the snow became shallow 
and the moose gained so rapidly that the man, to 
save his life, sprang up a tree. As he did so the 
cow reared and struck at him, one fore foot catch- 
ing in his snow-shoe and tearing it clear off, giving 
his ankle a bad wrench. After watching him a 
minute or two she turned and continued her flight ; 
whereupon he climbed down the tree, patched up 
his torn snow-shoe and limped after the moose, 
which he finally killed. 

An old hunter named Purvis told me of an ad- 
venture of the kind, which terminated fatally. He 
was hunting near the Coeur d'Alene Mountains 
with a mining prospector named Pingree; both 



The Moose 271 

were originally from New Hampshire. Late in 
November there came a heavy fall of snow, deep 
enough to soon bring a deer to a standstill, al- 
though not so deep as to hamper a moose's move- 
ments. The men bound on their skees and started 
to the borders of a lake, to kill some blacktail. In 
a thicket close to the lake's brink they suddenly 
came across a bull moose — a lean old fellow, still 
savage from the rut. Pingree, who was nearest, 
fired at and wounded him ; whereupon he rushed 
straight at the man, knocked him down before he 
could turn roimd on his skees, and began to poimd 
him with his terrible fore feet. Summoned by his 
comrade's despairing cries, Purvis rushed roimd 
the thickets, and shot the squeaHng, trampling 
monster through the body, and immediately after 
had to swing himself up a small tree to avoid its 
furious rush. The moose did not turn after this 
charge, but kept straight on, and was not seen 
again. The wounded man was past all help, for 
his chest was beaten in, and he died in a couple of 
hours. 

END OF VOLUME I 



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